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THE  FRENCH 

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THE    FRENCH    AND    THE   ENGLISH 


THE   FRENCH   AND 
THE   ENGLISH 


BY 


LAURENCE  JERROLD 


NEW  YORK 
DODD    MEAD   &   COMPANY 


<ltf02^J 


CONTENTS 

Pi.OE 

I.    The  English 3 

II.    The  French 19 

III.  London 36 

IV.  Paris 53 

V.    Politics 73 

VI.    Politicians 97 

VII.    Press 115 

VIII.    Averages 139 

IX.    Cranks 159 

X.    Poets 183 

XI.    Poetry 197 

XII.    Prose 235 

XIII.  Children 251 

XIV.  "Men" 265 

Index 283 


THE  ENGLISH 


THE   ENGLISH 

Men  know  themselves  little,  peoples  know  them- 
selves less.  Probably  of  all  peoples  the  French  is  the 
least  ignorant  of  itself,  the  English  the  most.  The 
actor  is  only  human  when  he  fancies  himself  most  in 
the  part  in  which  he  had  to  be  least  himself.  A  man 
often  plumes  himself  precisely  on  being  what  he  is 
not ;  a  sensitive  child  will  often  hate  himself  for  what 
he  is.  Peoples  are  like  the  man  and  the  child  ;  per- 
haps the  English  is  the  most  manlike  in  its  mistaken 
vanities  and  the  most  childlike  in  its  shy  shrinkings, 
and  the  French  at  the  opposite  pole  the  least  self- 
questioning  and  the  most  reasonably  conceited,  though 
even  the  French  is  not  infallible  about  itself.  National 
consciousness  is  fitful  and  broken  like  the  flashes  of 
consciousness  in  instinctive  animal  life.  Peoples  seem 
seldom  to  use  the  flashes  to  good  purpose  ;  they  may 
feel,  they  rarely  reason,  rightly  about  themselves.  A 
man  or  a  faction  having  wrested  a  hearmg  becomes 
by  right  or  might  a  people's  mouthpiece  ;  this  is  a 
flash  of  national  consciousness.  The  mouthpiece 
speaks   out   a   people's    destiny   and   character,   and 

3  B  2 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

commonly  pronounces  wrong.  The  mistake  becomes 
an  axiom  against  which  the  people's  instinct  has  a 
hard  fight. 

Peoples  choose  or  accept  representative  men  and 
representative  ideas  that  do  not  represent  them 
rightly.  Bismarck  never  spoke  rightly  for  the 
German  people,  but  his  voice  drowned  all  others. 
Napoleon  never  spoke  for  the  French,  but  they  were 
dumb  while  he  roared  as  only  he  could  roar.  Every 
thinking  person  acknowledges  that  our  own  much 
softer-spoken  representative  men  of  to-day  are  re- 
markably un-English. 

To-day  Germany  calls  herself,  or  is  called  by  the 
faction  of  the  German  people  which  Europe  listens 
to,  the  paragon  of  brute  strength ;  but  some  part  of 
the  world  wonders  whether  what  is  most  curious  in 
her,  and  perhaps  pathetic,  be  not  her  animal  weakness, 
and  whether  the  rising  brain-power  of  revolt  be  not 
more  interesting  in  her  than  the  sodden  mentality  of 
discipline.  She  waves  her  mailed  fist,  but  her  best 
contributions  to  the  serious  thought  of  to-day  have 
been  curious  studies  and  fine  examples  of  interesting 
intellectual  disease,  and  her  iron  organisation  is  her 
boast,  but  she  may  be  applying  her  gifts  of  method 
and  combination  to  the  sure  though  slow  planning  of 
social  revolution.  The  United  States  x)f  to-day,  as 
everybody  knows,  roar  out  their  energy ;  does  it 
amount  in  matters  of  fact,  in  things  of  the  body,  in 
things  that  pay  money,  to  much  more  than  the  meek 

4 


THE   ENGLISH 

toiling  of  middle  class  England  which  nobody  talks 
about  ?  There  is  an  American  more  subtle  than 
energetic,  not  blunt  but  morbidly  delicate,  shrinking, 
not  go-a-head,  worshipping  the  past  and  shy  of  the 
future,  not  conquering  but  receptive,  a  man  who  less 
than  a  European  thinks  of  breaking  new  ground, 
and  who  more  than  an  Englishman  clings  to  the  most 
anciently  trodden  soil.  Some  call  him  the  best 
American,  others  the  played-out  American  ;  is  he 
not  the  real  American  ?  He  certainly  is,  taken  in  his 
surroundings,  a  more  original  type  than  the  strenuous 
American.  There  are  few  finer  examples  of  a  nation 
misunderstanding  itself  than  glorious  Walt  Whitman, 
who  thought  he  was,  whom  perhaps  America  (certainly 
some  Europeans)  took  to  be,  America,  spontaneous, 
free,  savagely  poetic,  madly  common.  He  never  saw 
the  really  original  America,  deliberate,  traditional, 
self-analytical,  and  furiously  refined.  Mr.  Henry 
James  is  not  all  the  real  America,  but  he  is  much 
more  the  real  America  than  Walt  Whitman  was. 
Perhaps  an  observer  without  preconceived  ideas 
will  find  that  the  most  important  characteristic  of 
America  to-day  is  subtlety.  Not  Russia  but  the 
factions  that  rule  the  Russian  people  think  the 
Russian  people  nothing  if  not  practical ;  one  of  the 
factions  went  to  Manchuria  solely  for  the  purposes 
of  a  great  practical  constructive  policy,  though  one 
would  not  guess  so  from  the  results.  The  faction  of 
the  social  democrats  thought  they  were  the  only  true 

5 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

founders  of  the  one  and  only  new  Social- Democratic 
State  of  the  world  at  the  revolution,  and  most  pro- 
bably think  so  still,  undismayed  by  their  achieve- 
ments. The  Italy  of  to-day  hates  the  name  of  artist 
and  admires  herself  for  her  delightful  tramcars. 
France,  the  realist,  often  calls  herself  the  idealist 
among  nations  when  a  fit  of  self-consciousness 
comes  on. 

Probably  the  most  misunderstood  of  nations  in 
political  history,  the  English,  is  the  nation  that  mis- 
understands itself  the  most.  If  we  don't  know  our- 
selves we  can't  expect  others  to  know  us.  As  a  body 
pohtic  we  are  fulsomely  buttered  up  for  our  smaller 
virtues  and  savagely  slanged  for  our  minor  vices,  and 
on  the  whole  we  accept  both  verdicts  meekly.  We 
have  been  called  the  Romans  of  to-day  or  the  pirates 
of  to-day ;  we  have  never  cried  out  at  the  absurdity 
of  both  comparisons,  but  have  merely  protested  diffi- 
dently that  both  were  exaggerated.  We  have  never 
even  really  denied  that  we  are  "a  nation  of  shop- 
keepers," at  any  rate  we  have  never  flung  back  that 
we  are  a  nation  of  poets.  For  the  worst  mistake  of 
the  English  nation  is  to  overrate  its  prose  and  ignore 
its  poetry,  to  overrate  its  material  and  underrate  its 
spiritual  worth,  to  overrate  its  fist,  its  money-bags, 
its  solidity,  its  "  sturdy  practical  common  sense,"  its 
"  firm  grasp  of  life."  A  sense  of  life  is  precisely  not 
one  of  our  national  virtues.  We  dream  admirably  of 
ways  how  not  to  live,  no  people  more  finely  ;  ways  of 

6 


THE   ENGLISH 

living  we  are  not  good  at  thinking  out.  The  French 
sometimes  make  the  contrary  mistake  and  persuade 
themselves  that  their  darling  sin  is  idealism,  being  all 
the  while  great  realists.  We  prize  our  poor  realism 
and  not  our  rich  dreams.  These  we  call  trifling 
ripples  on  the  national  consciousness,  whereas  they 
are  deep  waves  in  the  national  mind.  We  understand 
neither  that  they  come  from  the  depths  of  our  cha- 
racter, nor  that,  even  were  they  only  on  the  surface, 
they  would  still  be  interesting.  We  understand  them 
neither  from  the  inside  nor  from  the  out.  The 
average  England  admires  herself  for  her  strength  and 
her  sense,  the  strength  of  her  Imperialists  and  her 
Boy  Scouts,  the  sense  of  her  City  men.  She  does 
not  care  about  her  cranks,  her  faddists,  her  zealots, 
her  fanatics,  her  madmen,  her  paradox  mongers,  her 
poets.  She  does  not  understand  either  that  they 
have  a  particular  interest  for  her  because  they  are 
national,  or  that  they  are  interesting  in  themselves. 
She  calls  them  either  a  bubble,  or  a  bore,  or  a  plague. 
That  there  is  any  use  or  virtue  in  them  has  never 
dawned  upon  her ;  she  has  not  the  least  idea  that 
they  make  her  great. 

Our  real  power  is  not  material,  our  real  power 
in  the  world  is  our  mind,  our  peculiar  mind ;  not 
our  reason,  our  reasoning  or  our  logic — for  in  those 
compartments  of  the  mind  the  force  in  the  world 
belongs  to  the  French  people — but  our*  fancy,  our 
imagination,  our  folly,  our  poetry.     Does   England 

7 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

often  reflect  that  she  rules  in  the  world  by  her 
poetry?  Does  literary  England  often  understand 
that  the  poetry  we  rule  by  in  the  world  is  not  merely 
our  verse,  but  the  twists  of  our  thought  ?  We  are 
poets  not  only  in  the  written  word  ;  we  are  poets  in 
many  turns  and  conceits  of  our  lives,  in  our  fads,  our 
dreams,  our  prejudices,  our  perversities,  our  cracked- 
brainedness.  We  are  poets,  and  mad  poets.  Does 
England  ever  admire  herself  for  her  poetry  and  her 
madness,  and  does  she  not  usually  plume  herself  on 
her  brute  sense  ?  Sense  is  what  we  have  not ;  poetic 
madness  is  what  has  made  us  great. 

It  must  inevitably  be  the  strong  and  absurd  desire 
of  an  EngUshman  who  looks  at  England — and  the 
desire  must  be  strongest  though  not  necessarily  most 
absurd  when  he  looks  at  her  from  afar — to  have  the 
power  to  make  her  look  at  herself.  A  man  who 
loved  a  woman  has  sometimes  hated  her,  because  she 
loved  herself  for  what  she  was  not  and  he  loved  her 
for  what  she  was.  Perhaps  he  was  wrong,  and 
perhaps  lier  charm  for  him  was  that  she  did  not 
know  herself.  Perhaps  the  charm  and  the  power  of 
England  are  her  unconsciousness.  Should  we  like 
her  less  if  she  knew  herself  better  ?  There  is  some- 
thing, indeed,  either  unpleasantly  soft  or  unpleasantly 
hard  in  the  self-knowledge  of  some  other  peoples. 
The  individual  mystical  Russian  wlio  tells  you  witli 
a  good  deal  of  slightly  slimy  relisJi,  "  All !  how 
whimsical  we  are,"  the  Frenchman  who  never  tells 

8 


THE   ENGLISH 

you  but  who  jolly  well  knows  how  sharp  he  is,  have 
charms  of  their  own,  not  the  charm  of  the  English- 
man who  hasn't  the  slightest  idea  what  he  is.  But 
Enghsh  unconsciousness  to  be  pleasant  must  be 
perfect ;  the  slightest  lapse  is  fatal.  In  the  rare 
moments  when  England  does  try  self-analysis  she 
always  analyses  herself  wrong.  England  is  not  only 
wrong  about  herself,  but  incoherent  and  inconsistent. 
Other  peoples  make  mistakes  about  themselves,  but 
consistent  mistakes ;  they  have,  if  not  knowledge, 
definite  theories  of  themselves.  The  German,  the 
Spaniard,  even  the  Russian,  form  consistent  images  of 
themselves :  efficiency,  chivalry,  sensitiveness.  The 
Frenchman's  practical  knowledge  of  himself  is  excel- 
lent, his  theory  of  himself  is  not  as  real  but  logical. 
He  knows  that  he  is  a  reasoner  and  an  artist,  he 
argues  that  he  is  an  idealist  and  a  sentimentalist  as 
well :  this  is  a  wrong  but  at  least  a  consistent 
reading.  He  imagines  that  his  natural  bent  for 
abstraction  makes  him  an  idealist,  because  he  cannot 
conceive  an  idealism  that  is  not  of  the  intelligence ; 
he  also,  though  less  often,  calls  himself  sentimental 
because  he  does  not  conceive  a  sentiment  to  spring 
from  aught  save  some  such  an  instinct  of  living  as 
governs  him.  An  irrational  idealism  not  in  harmony 
but  in  conflict  with  reason,  and  sentiment  not  in 
harmony  but  in  conflict  with  the  will  to  live,  he 
either  does  not  know,  or  learning  of  them  even 
denies. 

9 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Perhaps  the  greatest  mistake  we  make  about 
ourselves  is  to  think  ourselves  solid  and  believe 
ourselves  dull.  The  intelligent  foreigner,  who  has 
come  to  us  and  got  beyond  the  traditional  miscon- 
ceptions of  political  history,  considers  us  on  an 
average  mad  and  is  surprised  to  find  us  as  solid  as 
we  are,  considering  how  imad  we  are ;  there  is  a 
great  deal  of  truth  in  his  view.  To  him  we  appear 
astonishingly  steady  in  the  mass  and  wonderfully 
unbalanced  in  the  individual.  To  ourselves  we  do 
not  generally  seem  mad.  We  hold  ourselves,  in  fact, 
to  be  the  standard  of  sanity  in  the  world.  The 
attitude  of  some  of  us  towards  other  peoples  proves 
this  by  implication.  Two  broad  types  of  behaviour 
are  observed  among  Englishmen  who  make  a  practice 
of  going  to  other  nations  for  excitement :  cursing 
and  gushing.  I  have  met  many  in  whom  one  or 
the  other  is  habitual.  The  man  who  roars  for  whisky 
in  the  JMedoc,  where  he  has  been  given  the  choicest 
classed  growths  to  sip,  and  the  man  who  takes  his 
London  Havanas  with  him  to  Holland  where  he 
could  save  fourpence  apiece  on  the  same  cigars,  are 
of  the  damning  temper.  They  travel  with  their  own 
drinks  and  smokes  in  their  luggage,  but  not  with  the 
sense  of  their  own  picturesqueness  within  them. 
They  travel  to  find  higher  excitement  in  cursing 
than  at  home  where  they  only  grumble.  Every 
un-English  way  of  doing  things  throws  them  con- 
stantly  into    an    enjoyable   fury.      They   carry   the 

10 


THE  ENGLISH 

English  standard  of  doing  everything  with  them, 
test  everything  by  it  and  joyously  damn  everything 
for  not  conforming  to  it.  Italian  laziness,  German 
boorishness,  French  lewdness,  keep  them  constantly 
excited.  Modern  Italy  they  wipe  out,  because 
modern  Italians  have  no  right  to  exist.  In  Berlin 
they  live  battlemented  with  British  grit  among  a 
hostile  population  ready  to  besiege  them,  and  delight 
in  the  state  of  siege.  France  fills  them  with  parti- 
cular rage  and  contempt :  no  French  wife  is  faithful, 
every  Frenchman  is  lecherous,  every  French  politician 
is  bought,  all  French  governments  are  incompetent, 
every  French  striker  is  an  anarchist,  every  French 
trooper  is  an  anti-militarist^  and  every  French  gun 
is  spiked.  They  live  among  the  French  in  constant 
fury  and  relish  it ;  they  wouldn't  be  happy  if  the 
French  reformed  and  they  had  nothing  left  to 
curse  at. 

This  temper  might  be  called  "  jingoism "  in  the 
damning  Englishman  ;  but  it  is  not  that  wholly,  or 
even  in  great  part.  It  is  mainly  the  curious  British 
impulse  to  seek  excitement  away  from  home,  which 
often  takes  the  physical  form  of  big-game  hunting. 
The  moral  excitement  of  stamping  among  other 
peoples  and  bringing  them  up  with  a  cudgel  the 
way  they  should  go,  is  perhaps  even  greater — cer- 
tainly more  varied.  Colonies  of  elderly  English 
ladies  with  limited  means  and  pensioned  English 
colonels  live  in  Naples,  apparently  for  the  purpose  of 

11 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

condemning  Neapolitan  squalor.  That  is  a  life  of 
keen  excitement.  The  colonels  and  the  elderly 
ladies  might  have  stayed  at  home  and  found  there 
the  same  occupation,  but  home  is  dull — the  fatal 
flaw  of  home.  The  traveller  with  a  temper  might 
have  gone  to  Tottenham  Court  Road,  to  Holywell 
Street  that  was,  to  Villiers  Street  of  to-day,  to  the 
Divorce  Court,  might  have  peered  behind  some 
English  pohtical  scenes,  have  watched  one  or  two 
English  strikes — but  all  that  was  dull  home,  dull 
and  undramatic.  Abroad  is  the  excitement,  and 
London  editors  frantically  dun  their  foreign  corre- 
spondents for  what  American  editors  (London 
editors  not  yet,  but  they  will  come  to  it)  call  "  hot 
stufF." 

The  excitement  of  gushing  is  perhaps  as  enjoy- 
able as  that  of  cursing.  It  is  also  a  peculiarly  British 
enjoyment.  No  other  nation  knows  it  except  in 
very  faint  and  rare  forms.  A  very  few  Americans 
are  very  English,  but  they  are  Americans  of  purely 
English  stock.  A  handful  of  North  Germans  assimi- 
late Enghsh  manners  wonderfully  well,  but  you  will 
find  more  energetic  love  of  country  among  them, 
perhaps,  than  among  Bavarian  bourgeoisie.  I  have 
met  several  Italians  whose  Anglicism  was  deliglitful 
to  a  patriotic  Englishman  and  sincere  ;  but  touch  the 
right  chord,  and  tliey  are  true  Italians.  Tlie  French- 
man loves  the  London  policeman  and  is  enthusiastic 
over  German  railways,  but  not  one  returns  to  France 

12 


THE   ENGLISH 

(even  after  cursing  his  own  peculiarly  offensive 
customs'  officers  at  the  frontier)  without  a  sudden 
glow  of  filial  fondness  for  the  pleasant  land.  One 
sort  of  man  is  unique  in  the  world :  the  type  of 
Englishman  who  ceases  to  gi'umble  the  moment  the 
channel  steamer  has  landed  him  on  the  continent, 
and  grumbles  again  as  soon  as  he  is  back  home. 
How  can  a  man  among  us  call  ourselves  unpictur- 
esque  when  we  have  two  such  types  ?  We  ought  to 
pride  ourselves  as  much  on  the  ecstatic  as  on  the 
damning  Englishman.  The  one  is  as  picturesque  as 
the  other,  and  both  go  from  home  seeking  the  pic- 
turesque. The  one  basks  as  gladly  as  the  other 
rages,  and  worships  with  the  same  delight  with  which 
he  might  curse  if  he  were  of  another  temper.  He 
lands  at  Boulogne,  and  a  little  open-air  cafe  throws 
him  into  an  ecstasy.  He  could  sit  there  all  day  with 
an  absinthe  before  him,  which  he  always  calls,  of 
course,  a  parrot,  to  be  quite  French — French  of  the 
days  of  Musset.  What  life !  What  amiability ! 
What  vivacity !  What  human  saneness !  "  We 
have  nothing  like  it.  1  could  sit  here  all  day  and 
love  myself  and  everybody  else.  When  I  get  back 
to  Charing  Cross  I  shall  feel  back  in  a  dully  mad 
world.     Here  is  the  only  brightly  sane  life." 

Now,  it  seems  clear  that  our  tourists,  our  journal- 
ists, our  humourists  would  not  go  abroad  for  the 
picturesque,  the  dramatic,  the  quaint,  if  they  found  it 
at  home.     They  prove  that  they  have  not  understood 

13 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

ourselves  to  be  as  picturesque  and  as  dramatic 
as  other  nations,  and  perhaps  even  quainter.  A 
curious  flaw  in  our  imagination  is  that  it  answers  to 
calls  from  other  peoples,  and  is  deaf  to  the  same 
coming  from  our  own.  Every  unfamiliar  thing  is 
wonderful  to  every  man,  but  the  same  defect  is  far 
less  in  the  imagination  of  other  peoples,  particularly 
the  French,  who  are  almost  as  quick  to  perceive  their 
own  picturesqueness  as  that  of  other  nations.  We 
have  an  old  habit  of  ignoring  what  in  ourselves 
should  appeal  to  our  imagination,  and  resignedly 
patting  our  solidity  on  the  back.  Our  reason  is 
acquired,  and  fancy  is  our  instinct :  we  have  only 
learnt  to  be  reasonable ;  we  have  forgotten  that  we 
are  whimsical  naturally. 

Often  acutely  self-conscious  individually,  we  are 
charmingly  unconscious,  as  a  rule,  in  the  mass.  The 
rudeness  of  the  Englishman,  as  he  is  known  typically 
abroad,  really  is,  of  course,  his  shyness.  He  is  very 
much  afraid  lest  he  should  elbow  his  way  into  other 
people's  lives,  and  he  therefore  treads  on  their  toes. 
The  haughty,  the  arrogant,  the  insolent  EngUsh- 
man  known  to  foreigners  is  the  timid,  shrinking, 
restrained  man  who  is  only  too  conscious  of  him- 
self. He  is  a  man  among  men  whom  for  the  world 
he  would  not  get  mixed  up  with,  as  he  hates  the  idea 
of  possibly  intruding  upon  them.  But  in  the  mass 
we  seem  to  be  cliarmingly  unconscious.  Self-con- 
sciousness is  not  self-knowledge,  and  the  man  who 

14 


THE  ENGLISH 

calculates  his   own    movements  so    nicely  that   he 
treads  upon  other  people's  toes  in  his  strong  efforts 
to  avoid  them  does  not  prove  that  he  has  measured 
his  powers  accurately ;  but  to  be  self-conscious  is  at 
least   to   wish   one   knew  one's   self.     The   men   of 
several  other  nations  seem  to  be  conscious  of  their 
own  'selves  the  less  as  their  nations   have  thought 
themselves   out   the    more.      The   man   is   not   shy 
because  his  nation  has  thought  its  place  out,  and  his 
place  out  for  him  into  the  bargain ;  he  does  not  tread 
upon  other  people's  toes,  because  he  knows  instinc- 
tively where  to  put  his  feet.     Is  it  because  his  people 
has   measured  its  stand  and  plumbed  its  attitude  ? 
The  attitude  of  the  shy  Englishman   among  other 
men  is  curious.      He  shrinks  and  he  tramples ;   he 
is   the  most  brutal  and   the  most  delicate  of  indi- 
viduals.    It  is  as  if  he  were  alternately  not  sure  and 
too  sure  of  him  and  his,  as  if  he  said  to  himself  alter- 
nately, "  What  am  I  ?  "  and  "  God's  truth,  after  all 
I   am  an  Englishman " ;    were   alternately  doubtful 
whether  England  really  exists  and  assured  that  one 
Englishman  can  lick  two  Germans,   three   French- 
men, and   four   Italians.     Very   few   men   of  other 
nations  possess  the  same  contrasts  and  unite  the  same 
diffidence  with  the  same  bland  brutality,  the   same 
insolence  with   the   same   tender   sensitiveness.     No 
Italian  was  ever  as  quiet  or  as  loud,  no  Frenchman 
as  discreet  or  as  blundering,  no  German  as  reserved 
or  as  brutal,  no  Russian  as  subtle  or  as  savage  as  an 

15 


K 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Englishman  can  be.  No  one  has  ever  met  trippers 
of  any  nation  behaving  as  violently  as  ours.  I,  for 
one,  have  never  found  anywhere  a  more  finely  ad- 
justed outlook  upon  the  world  than  I  have  sometimes 
among  my  countrymen. 

Yet  they  are  not  sure  of  themselves.     The  man 
of  almost  every  other  nation,  even  of  a  nation  which,         ^ 
judged  by  any  standard,  is  below  ours,  is  surer  of 
himself.      If  one   of    the   most   repellent   sights   of 
Europe  is  the  Britisher  asserting  his  insularity,  one 
of  the  most  affecting  sights  is  the  real,  thoughtful, 
well-tempered  Englishman  apologising  for  England? 
\¥hy   should   he   excuse    his    country  ?      His   only 
reason  can  be  that  his  country  does  not  know  itself, 
any  more  than  he  knows  his  country.     It  seems  as  if 
men  of  other  nations  were  backed  by  a  national  self- 
consciousness.      They   need   not   know   themselves ; 
their  country  has  thought  itself  out,  and  spared  its 
sons   the    trouble   of    thinking    themselves   out :    a 
nation's   self- consciousness   saves   patriotic    self- con- 
sciousness in  the  individual. 


THE  FKENCH 


II 

THE    FRENCH 

The  French  probably  know  themselves  better  than 
we  know  ourselves.  A  conceit  in  us  might  tempt  us 
to  say  that  this  is  because  there  is  less  to  know,  and 
under  one  aspect  it  would  not  be  a  quite  groundless 
conceit.  There  indeed  is  more  of  us  to  know  than 
there  is  of  the  French  ;  whether  a  third  party  would 
find  it  as  well  worth  knowing  a  return  of  meekness 
may  make  us  wonder.  We  cover  more  ground ;  is 
there  as  much  thickness  of  us  to  penetrate?  We 
certainly  present  the  greater  variation,  we  have  wider 
extremes,  we  spread  ourselves  further,  we  think  more 
and  we  think  less,  we  are  madder  and  duller,  more 
heavenly  and  more  Boeotian,  we  have  greater  poets 
and  greater  fools.  The  French  stand  more  together, 
for  they  all  stand,  those  of  them  that  fly  sometimes, 
and  those  that  at  times  grovel.  They  stand  together 
a  compact  and  intellectually  coherent  people,  the 
most  homogeneous  in  Europe,  let  alone  America. 
That  they  should  know  themselves  better  than  we 
know  ourselves  cannot  surprise  us  if  we  have  under- 
stood them  in  the  slightest  degree.     Their  variations 

19  c  2 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

are  of  course  superficial  compared  with  ours ;  their 
excesses,  their  waywardness,  their  perversities,  their 
madness  are  accidents,  pecuHarities,  twitches  of 
manner.  When  we  are  mad  we  have  madness  in 
the  blood.  They  are  mad  in  flourishes  of  character, 
and  the  character  remains  sane  at  bottom.  Almost 
conversely  one  can  say  that  when  we  are  dull,  we  are 
dull  through  and  through,  whereas  if  I  may  quote 
myself,  "even  the  pillars  of  French  society  have 
intelligence." 

The  people  that  is  on  the  whole  the  sanest  in  the 
world  must  know  itself  fairly  well,  and  it  does.  It 
is  not  the  most  self- analysing,  certainly  not  the  most 
self-conscious  of  people  (perhaps  we  are  the  latter), 
but  it  is  the  people  with  the  best  instinctive  know- 
ledge of  itself.  It  is  the  one  that  feels  itself  best. 
It  is  the  one  in  which  all  classes  stand  together  and 
best  understand  each  other.  It  is  not  a  startling 
thing  to  the  French  that  the  French  navvy  and  JM. 
Anatole  France  talking  together  should  speak  almost 
the  same  language,  using  for  such  purposes  very 
nearly  the  same  words,  very  much  the  same  expres- 
sions and  the  same  accent  of  speech  barring  a  few  nice 
shades ;  correct  a  sliglitly  slurred  vowel  here  and 
there,  and  one  or  two  imperfectly  grammatical 
idioms,  and  the  labourer's  speech  is  the  Academician's. 
It  does  startle  the  French  that  a  London  clerk  should 
not  speak  the  same  tongue  even  as  his  employer,  that 
a  West  End  tradesman  and  his  West  End  customer 

20 


THE   FRENCH 

speak  differently,  that  a  costermonger  and  an  under- 
graduate speak  two  entirely  different  languages.  The 
speaking  of  the  French  tongue  is  the  first  noticeable 
link  that  binds  the  French  people.  What  barriers 
can  the  Marseilles,  the  Bordeaux,  the  Picardy,  the 
Normandy,  even  the  Alsatia  accent  set  up,  compared 
with  the  dropping  of  an  "h"  and  "  Hdy  "?  Our  dozens 
of  tongues  from  original  cockney,  blended  cockney, 
smart  cockney  to  pulpit  accents  and  the  shout  of  the 
woman  of  fashion,  leaving  out  all  provincial  burrs  and 
twangs,  have  no  counterparts  in  French.  That  you 
should  tell  from  a  man's  speech  whether  he  has  been 
to  a  University,  that  a  carefully  self- cultivated  man 
should  in  a  moment  of  excitement  drop  an  "  h  "  and 
damn  himself^  that  a  chorus-girl  taught  by  a  stage 
manager  should  talk  on  and  off  the  stage  two  different 
tongues,  seems  incredible  in  France.  It  requires 
years  of  knowledge  of  the  French  language  to  detect 
the  shades  which  mark  differences  of  class ;  to  a 
foreigner,  even  calling  himself  an  old  Parisian,  a 
Parisian  shop-girl  will  pass  for  a  duchess  in  her 
speech,  and  perhaps  her  manner  also,  for  an  hour  or 
two.  A  foreigner  in  London  with  a  hundred  words 
of  English  may  soon  be  able  to  tell  a  stockbroker's 
wife  even  from  a  banker's  wife.  Narrow  differences 
of  class  and  narrow  or  broad  differences  of  set  are  not 
distinguishable  in  French  at  all.  The  aristocracy,  the 
bourgeoisie,  learned  society,  fast  society,  political 
society,  official  society,  bankers,  doctors,  stock-brokers, 

21 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

business  men,  traders,  journalists,  and  their  wives 
and  daughters,  actors,  actresses,  the  demi-monde,  and 
even  the  demi-monde's  mothers,  all  speak  the  same 
French  language ;  the  mere  idea  of  observing  that 
they  do  v^^ould  amaze  any  Frenchman,  for  it  would 
never  occur  to  him  that  they  might  not. 

The  French  world  is  homogeneous  and  each  class 
has  a  consistent  idea,  not  only  of  itself,  but  of  the 
whole.  Labourer,  man  of  substance  or  man  of 
thought,  the  Frenchman  has  formed  for  himself  a 
picture  of  France.  He  awaits  no  surprises,  expects 
no  discoveries  and  believes  in  none ;  he  has  thought 
about  his  country,  more  perhaps  felt  about  it,  any- 
how his  country  is  a  person  to  him.  He  knows  her 
face,  her  voice,  her  gesture.  He  is  not  only  a  patriot, 
but  a  conscious  patriot.  He  knows  why  he  loves  his 
country.  The  Englishman  has  not  the  least  idea 
why  he  loves  his.  It  requires  a  really  thoughtful 
Englishman  to  have  thought  about  his  love  of 
country ;  a  little  French  shopkeeper  will  tell  you 
why  he  loves  France,  and  so  tell  you  that  he  proves 
having  to  himself  answered  the  question.  He  knows 
why  he  likes  French  ways  of  trading,  strange  as  they 
may  seem  to  outsiders.  The  French  artist  knows 
why  he  likes  the  grey  green  of  French  trees,  the 
French  philosopher  why  he  likes  the  steely-blue  of 
French  philosophic  thought,  and  the  French  bourgeois 
can  tell  you  exactly  why  he  prefers  the  solid  France 
among  all  other  solid  countries. 

22 


THE   FRENCH 

The  business  class,  the  hand-working  class,  the 
thinking  class  have  each  formed  their  picture  of  their 
country.  Each  one  is  finished,  each  one  is  varnished 
and  under  glass.  That  of  the  solidest  class  is  the  best 
varnished  and  most  handsomely  framed.  The  portrait 
is  that  of  the  only  really  sane  country  in  the  world. 
Here  are  delineated  caution  with  just  the  sufficient 
dash  of  devilry,  cool  mind  and  hot  senses  nicely 
and  properly  balanced,  really  human  reason,  an 
instinct  to  hit  upon  what  when  all  is  said  and  done  is 
the  only  really  workable  method  of  living,  the  type 
finally  not  of  a  great,  sublime,  exploring,  but  of  the 
only  real  work-a-day  humanity,  that  alone  which  all 
told  gets  out  of  life  the  best  profit  life  has  to  give. 
The  owner  of  the  portrait  does  not  pretend  that  it 
has  great  beauty,  great  intelligence,  great  will ;  but 
he  is  quite  sure  that  a  better  everyday  face  can't  be 
painted.  If  the  eye  had  more  of  the  fire  of  thought 
the  lips  might  be  too  thin,  if  the  lips  were  more 
sensitively  curved  the  chin  might  be  weaker,  if  the 
forehead  were  broadened  the  nose  would  probably  be 
put  out  of  joint.  No  feature  could  be  improved 
without  spoiling  the  whole  ;  no  detail  in  solid  French 
life  could  be  bettered  without  throwing  the  whole 
machinery  out  of  gear.  Solid  France  has  thought 
about  herself  and  come  to  the  firm  conclusion  that 
among  solid  countries  she  is  the  standard.  She  has 
the  secret  and  instinctive  belief  that  all  others  have  a 
touch  of  madness.     The  French  bourgeoisie  may  rail 

23 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

at  itself,  but  brought  close  to  the  bourgeoisie  and  the 
government  of  any  other  country,  it  will  smell  out 
some  streak  of  insanity  in  them.  It  may  shout  that 
France  is  going  to  the  dogs,  but  only  because  it  has 
for  France  so  extreme  a  standard  of  solidity  that 
even  France  cannot  always  keep  up  to  it.  Other 
countries  may  be  held  up  in  theory  by  the  French 
bourgeoisie  as  patterns  of  stability,  but  chiefly 
because  of  what  French  eyes  themselves  read  into 
other  civihsations,  for  instance  the  English :  much  in 
England,  if,  and  when,  understood,  dismays  the 
French  and  tliey  fall  back  upon  their  own  sane 
country  with  relief  Their  solidity  is  best  proved  by 
their  persistent  search  for  order;  we  half  enjoy 
chaos. 

Thinking  France  pictures  herself  to  herself  not 
only  by  instinct,  but  by  conscious,  careful,  often 
complacent  effort.  There  is  no  thoughtful  French- 
man who  has  not  thought  out  the  "  French  mind." 
Few  of  the  most  reflecting  Englishmen  have  reflected 
upon  England  ;  a  mystery  to  wonder  at  now  and  then 
is  England  to  keen  English  minds,  an  inscrutable 
person  to  admire,  love,  curse,  to  take  for  granted,  not 
to  question,  an  enigmatic  person  of  whom  one  says, 
"  Thus  is  she ;  why  ?  none  can  tell,  but  she  is  so." 
There  never  was  an  intellectual  Frenchman  who 
shrugging  his  shoulders  said  of  France,  "  She  is 
beyond  me ;  I  love  her  but  I  can't  make  her  out." 
It  is  we  who  shrug  our  shoulders  at  England,  and 

24 


THE  FRENCH 

worshipping  our  country  "  give  it  up  "  like  a  riddle. 
The  thinkers  of  France  can  always  make  France  out. 
They  have  analysed  her  virtues,  even  examined  her 
vices  to  a  certain  degree.  They  know  exactly  what 
they  love  her  for  and  have  long  since  thought  out 
apologies  for  those  of  her  shortcomings  to  which  they 
have  after  deliberate  consideration  agreed  to  confess. 
They  naturally  admire  the  French  mind,  which  is 
theirs,  but  what  is  much  more,  they  know  precisely 
what  it  is,  whereas  we,  fond  and  proud  of  the  English 
spirit,  are  rarely  capable  of  explaining  it  to  any  one. 
They  know  better  than  any  one  that  clearness,  reason, 
taste,  balance  are  the  first  qualities  of  the  French  mind. 
In  literature,  art,  science,  philosophy,  "  un-French " 
is  a  verdict  of  condemnation,  "  essentially  French," 
one  of  approval.  Who  ever  heard  of  a  line  of  verse, 
a  school  of  painting,  a  scientific  hypothesis,  a  philo- 
sophic system  condemned  as  "  un-English  "  ?  The 
use  of  improved  against  out-of-date  fire-arms  is 
"  un-English " ;  a  stage  innuendo  to  which  public 
notice  has  accidentally  been  drawn  may  be  un- 
English.  The  condemnation  is  not  applied  more 
philosophically  than  that.  *'  Un-French "  means 
antagonistic  to  a  whole  scheme  of  the  universe. 
Blank  verse,  often  attempted  in  French,  has  as  often 
been  branded  un-French.  So  great  an  artist  in  one 
art  as  Puvis  de  Chavannes  was  annoyed  by  as  great 
or  a  greater  one  in  another,  Wagner,  because  he 
found   Die  Walkiire  contrary  to  the  French  spirit, 

25 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

and  Ibsen  was  long  dismissed  because  he  was  radically 
un-French.  A  scientific  theory  built  with  the  aid  of 
some  imagination  upon  pure  induction  unverified  by 
deduction  is  un-French  because  unsound.  Most 
mystic  philosophies  leave  the  French  mind  uneasy; 
it  may  dabble  in  them,  but  after  all  they  are  un- 
French  and  it  generally  emerges  from  them  with 
relief.  To  talk  of  French  "insularity,"  or  as 
Bjornstjerne  Bjornson  did  to  call  the  French  the 
Chinese  of  Europe,  is  easy  and  loose.  What  is 
better  worth  observing  is  that  if  the  French  in- 
telligence be  insular,  it  owns  the  tightest  little 
intellectual  isle  in  the  world  and  that  if  it  have  built 
walls  round  itself  it  knows  exactly  what  is  going  on 
within  them.  That  is  more  than  can  be  said  of  an 
insularity  which  doesn't  know  itself  like  ours.  The 
French  mind  knows  that  it  thinks  clearly,  judges 
synthetically,  tastes  delicately  and  sees  keenly ;  it 
may  not  want  to  do  more  than  it  does  but  it  knows 
what  it  can  do. 

The  French  claims  to  be  the  most  human  mind, 
perhaps  justly.  We  should  note  this  thing,  that  we 
who  govern  a  great  part  of  the  world  have  fashioned 
a  very  small  part  of  the  world  to  our  intelligence. 
Where  we  rule,  our  presence  by  our  instinct  rules ; 
our  mind,  which  is  first  of  all  poetic,  is  never  the 
means  by  which  we  rule.  There  is  poetry  in  our  fresh 
and  unthinking  pioneers,  but  only  the  reflective,  not 
they,  can  see  it,  and  the  last  thing  they  would  think 

2G 


THE  FRENCH 

of  would  be  that  they  should  spread  the  English 
intelligence.  The  French,  with  infinitely  less  ruling 
influence,  have  permeated  the  world  much  more  with 
their  mind  than  we  have  with  ours. 

The  English  intelHgence  does  not  soak  into  others  ; 
the  English  mental  outlook  is  not  ready  for  others  to 
share.  An  English  brain  seems  to  want  English 
blood  to  quicken  it,  English  mentality  to  suppose 
English  eyes.  English  influence  in  the  world  is 
spread  only  by  Englishmen  ;  where  the  Englishman 
stops,  English  influence  ceases.  If  the  English  spirit 
is  spread  over  the  world  it  is  because  the  Englishman 
has  gone  over  the  world  in  the  flesh  :  his  spirit  has 
not  gone  beyond  him.  America  is  English  where 
American  blood  is  English ;  the  English  intelligence 
never  soaks  into  Irish  or  German  America.  Canada 
is  English  in  so  far  as  Canadians  are  of  English 
stock.  French  Canadians  use  and  like  the  English 
public  spirit,  the  English  mind  remains  foreign  to 
them.  Australia  and  New  Zealand  we  have  broadly 
made  English  because  we  have  peopled  them  :  we 
seem  to  Anglicize  only  where  we  people.  In  govern- 
ing India,  we  have  done  a  work  which,  with  all  its 
faults,  is  the  greatest  of  its  kind  known  ;  but  India  is 
as  impervious  as  ever  to  the  English  mentality.  Is 
the  whole  world  impervious  to  our  thought  ?  Can 
the  English  way  of  thinking  come  only  to  the 
English  brain  ?  Are  we  indeed  a  splendidly-isolated 
people,  intellectually  ? 

27 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

The  French  mind  has  touched  other  minds  imme- 
diately. No  important  people  has  spread  physically 
so  little  in  the  world,  and  none  has  had  a  greater 
mental  influence.  France  stays  at  home  and  sends 
her  ideas  abroad  ;  we  colonize  with  our  hands,  and 
where  our  ideas  of  freedom  and  of  government  have 
grown,  we  set  them  in  the  soil  ourselves.  The  mind 
of  France  is  different  from  ours  in  that  it  is  more 
purely  mind,  whereas  ours  is  closer  to  our  sentiment 
and  our  senses.  Senses  and  sentiment  may  give 
physical  hegemony,  but  intelligence  penetrates  the 
world.  French  reason  has  disciplined  a  hundred 
minds  for  one  that  English  poetry  has  set  dreaming. 
If  the  mind  that  penetrates  the  greatest  number  of 
human  minds  be  the  most  human,  the  French  is  the 
most  human. 

Even  the  French  mind,  which  knows  itself  so 
well,  is  not  infallible  about  itself,  but  even  in  its 
self-misunderstandings  it  is  consistent ;  we  do  not 
misunderstand  ourselves  consistently.  The  mistakes 
the  French  make  about  themselves  are  almost  solely 
political ;  those  we  make  about  ourselves  are  generally 
not  political.  The  French  create  for  their  own  amuse- 
ment a  turmoil  of  political  strife,  and,  having  created 
it,  find  a  further  pastime  in  damning  it.  We  abide 
quietly  after  all  by  our  political  life,  and  do  not 
question  it.  But  the  French,  before  their  political, 
always  posit  their  real  life,  which  is  all  that  essentially 
matters  to  them  ;   we  have  a  dream  that  only  our 

28 


THE  FRENCH 

political  life  matters.  The  mistakes  we  make  about 
ourselves  are  thus  chiefly  mistakes  about  our  real 
lives  ;  we  ignore  our  fancy,  our  poetry  and  our  spirit. 
Our  politics  we  understand  superficially  well,  the 
daily  moves,  each  small  detail  of  tactics.  The  French 
persistently  twist  themselves  up  in  their  political 
games,  but  strike  the  straight  line  in  the  business  of 
their  lives  ;  they  imagine  a  thousand  vain  things  when 
they  look  at  themselves  as  a  politic  body,  but  when 
each  family  looks  at  itself  it  looks  with  clear-eyed 
reason.  Even  French  political  imagination  is  in  fact 
consistent.  The  cry  of  "  wolf,"  the  fear  of  anarchy, 
in  the  most  strongly  organised  state  in  the  world,  are 
only  the  bleatings  of  the  lambs  ;  the  bourgeoisie  calls 
upon  protection  and  mastery  only  because  it  is  already 
guided  and  ruled  by  its  own  traditions.  French  society 
complains  that  it  is  shaky  only  because  it  is  in- 
stinctively so  solid,  shivers  with  the  fear  of  upheaval 
only  because  it  knows  its  foundations  so  deep.  We 
never  feel  the  same  political  fears,  for  this,  among 
other  reasons,  that  we  do  not  feel  our  lives  rooted  in 
the  same  reality.  The  French,  in  short,  fear  revolu- 
tion more  than  we,  because  the  average  Frenchman 
has  twice  as  much  to  lose  by  revolution  as  the 
average  Englishman.  French  political  alarm  is  more 
consistent  than  English  individual  incomprehension. 
The  Frenchman  loses  his  head  over  his  politics,  the 
Englishman  ignores  his  own  life.  And  social  revolu- 
tion  may  come   sooner   in  the   country  of  political 

29 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

complacency  and  individual  impulse  than  in  that  of 
poUtical  nerves  and  individual  system. 

The  mistakes  we  make  about  the  French  and  the 
mistakes  the  French  make  about  us  are  characteristic 
of  both  peoples.  Every  one  knows  that  our  first 
blunder  is  to  call  Frenchmen  feather-brained  and  the 
first  French  blunder  is  to  call  us  matter-of-fact.  The 
former  comes  from  our  honest  delusion  that  the 
individual  Englishman  is  the  standard  of  common 
sense  for  the  world  and  the  latter  from  the  half- 
belief,  half-pretence  of  the  French  that  they  are  a 
people  swayed  by  political  sentiment.  We  share  at 
the  outset  the  mistake  the  French  make  about  them- 
selves and  suppose  them  whimsical  politically,  but 
we  carry  the  misunderstanding  further  and  imagine 
them  fantastic  through  and  through  in  their  own 
lives,  and  no  Frenchman  can  ever  go  so  wrong  about 
himself  as  to  think  himself  that.  We  are  well 
persuaded  that  particularly  our  political  methods  are 
the  only  sane  methods ;  those  of  the  French  immedi- 
ately appear  to  us  fanciful  because  we  do  not 
understand  that  mere  common  sense  is  not  the  first 
thing  the  French  ask  for  in  politics.  It  takes  us  a 
long  time  to  discover  that  in  their  lives  they  are 
greater  realists  than  we.  The  French  at  the  outset 
gaze  with  admiration  upon  the  solid  frontage  of  our 
political  and  social  fabric.  There  are  no  ornaments 
here,  consequently  no  weak  spots.  They  are  deluded 
by  familiarity  with  the  amusements   of  their   own 


THE  FRENCH 

political  games :  here  is  no  amusement,  therefore  no 
game,  all  is  hard  business.  The  truth  is,  on  the 
contrary,  that  French  games  of  politics  are  more 
earnest  than  ours ;  ours  are  only  more  solemn. 
English  houses  seem  to  the  Frenchman  as  solid  as 
the  English  political  fabric,  English  private  lives  as 
business-like  as  English  public  life.  He  is  remark- 
ably soon  undeceived.  When  he  gets  to  know  the 
English,  in  three  weeks,  he  at  once  comes  to  his  final 
conclusion  :  we  are  sane  in  the  mass  and  mad  in  the 
individual.  He  makes  this  discovery  much  sooner 
than  we  that  of  the  sanity  of  French  lives.  It  seems 
to  be  a  discovery  much  easier  to  make ;  it  is  the 
thick  French  wall  of  reserve  that  is  hard  to  break 
through,  once  reached  behind  the  gay  creepers 
hiding  it. 

But  there  is  a  discovery  which  the  French  are 
even  slower  at  making  than  we  are  at  finding  out 
French  solidity.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  scarcely  any 
Frenchman  can  be  got  to  believe  in  the  poetry  of 
the  English  mind.  Some  very  few  have  discovered 
it.  The  others  are  even  less  easily  persuaded  of  it 
than  the  average  Englishman  is  that  the  French  have 
more  common  sense  than  we.  The  world  in  general 
denies  poetry  to  the  English  character,  partly  perhaps 
because  we  don't  own  to  it  ourselves.  The  world  in 
general  acknowledges  French  reason,  because  the 
French  themselves  are  the  first  to  know  they  have  it 
and  to  impart  it. 

81 


LONDON 


Ill 

LONDON 

Of  all  great  towns  London  probably  understands 
herself  least.  All  others  have  learnt  to  know  them- 
selves more  than  she.  We  know  them  by  what  they 
have  thought  out  and  told  us  about  themselves. 
The  Londoner  may  have  lived  much  of  his  life  else- 
where, and  London  is  still  home  to  him  as  no  other 
place  can  be  ;  but  he  knows  Paris,  Vienna,  Rome  .  .  . 
and  London  is  still  a  mystery  to  him,  because 
London  is  a  mystery  to  herself.  Paris  to  herself  is 
as  clear  as  day ;  she  has  no  doubts  about  herself,  she 
may  not  know  herself  in  every  corner,  but  she  has 
grasped  what  she  is  as  a  whole  clearly,  and  any  new 
discovery  she  may  make  about  herself  will  fit  into 
her  general  thought-out  scheme ;  any  new  discovery 
in  London  is  an  amazement  to  Londoners.  Paris 
knows  her  various  states  of  mind,  her  boulevards  and 
her  Marais,  her  Boul'  Mich,  and  her  learned  oases, 
her  cosmopolitan  Champs  Elyse'es  and  her  dying 
Faubourg  St.  Germain,  her  mad  American  Mont- 
parnasse  and  her  night  cafes  of  English  JMont- 
martre.    London  does  not  know  herself  as  well  as  a 

35  D  2 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

transparent  place  like  Brussels  knows  itself*.  Some 
poet  born  within  sound  of  Bow  Bells  should  sing  to 
her  of  herself,  not  of  old  London  but  of  real  London, 
cursing  not  modern  London  but  false  London.  The 
streets  of  Paris  have  had  better  singers  ;  as  good 
were  deserved  by  the  spontaneous  streets  of  London 
that  grew  by  themselves  and  found  out  their  own 
way,  dropping  curious  signs  as  they  went,  bookshops, 
chemists  for  lewd  and  realistic  uses,  strange  "  pubs," 
and  the  strings  of  stucco  houses  that  painted  them- 
selves with  demure  whimsicalness  chocolate,  maroon, 
or  dusty  green.  Such  awful  poems  as  London  Wall, 
Cannon  Street,  Bishopsgate  Street  Within,  and 
Without  too  if  you  like,  such  romantic  as  Shore- 
ditch  and  Hoxton,  such  epic  as  Mile  End  Road, 
such  tragic  as  West  Kensington,  such  human  as 
Bermondsey,  want  to  be  sung.  Perhaps  even  the 
lullaby  of  Berkeley  Square  has  not  been  yet  cooed 
true.  The  tragic  flower- hags,  the  puzzle  and  collar- 
stud  men,  the  pathetic  Tube  liftmen,  the  last  dying 
hansom  cabman,  have  they  any  of  them  ever  been 
sung  ?  Has  any  poet  even  sung  the  society  girl  on 
the  giggle  and  her  infant  mamma  violently  bright  and 
amusing,  the  delicious  drawing-room  cynic,  and  the 
man  who  deplores  that  other  people  have  no  sense 
of  humour  ?  There  should  be  also  some  full  cursing 
of  some  modern  London  that  is  false  London,  and 
that  proves  in  stone  and  bricks  and  mortar  how  little 
London  understands  herself. 

86 


LONDON 

Every  Londoner  ought  to  be  taken  round  London 
by  a  Parisian  discovering  London.  We  should  learn 
to  look  at  streets  and  people  with  new  eyes  and  not 
to  solve  but  at  least  to  consider  the  problems  of 
London.  AVhy  is  London  homelike  ?  The  Parisian 
could  not  tell  him,  but  might  (if  sufficiently  informed) 
point  this  curious  thing  out  to  him,  that  Paris  to  the 
Parisian  is  never  exactly  as  homelike  as  London  to 
the  Londoner.  The  Parisian  is  always  as  much  in 
love  with  Paris  and  Paris  is  home  to  him,  but  if  there 
were  a  French  word  for  homelike  it  would  not  fit 
Paris.  It  fits  such  things  in  London  as  the  old  stucco 
houses,  as  the  business-like  railway  stations,  as  sooty 
Somerset  House,  as  the  yellow  Thames,  so  curiously 
well.  Why  can  Florence  be  homelike  and  not  Rome 
or  Venice  ?  Why  can  one  imagine  the  word  to  suit 
Vienna  and  never  by  any  means  Berlin  ?  Why  does 
it  seem  the  very  word  coined  for  poor  plain  London  ? 
The  Londoner  should  ask  himself  the  question.  The 
Londoner  discovering  London  should  learn  to  be 
astonished  by  everything  he  sees.  There  is  a  beauti- 
ful old  moral  tale  of  Eyes  and  No  Eyes.  The 
Londoner  is  No  Eyes  for  London,  the  Parisian  is 
all  Eyes  for  Paris.  No  Eyes  crosses  London  Town 
and  sees  a  crowd  in  the  Tube,  his  white,  pink  or 
green  evening  paper,  and  less  rain  than  yesterday  or 
more  ;  Eyes  makes  an  amazing  journey.  He  goes 
down  one  wide  street  and  every  house  sets  him 
wondering.     In  little  front  gardens,  with  dim,  sealed 

37 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

up  little  houses  behind,  "  Teas "  hangs  on  a  weak 
tree.  Who  ever  has  tea  there  ?  Next  door  a  brass 
plate  says  "  Dentist "  ;  who,  m  this  same  little  shut- 
up  house  with  white  blinds^  at  the  top  of  the  same 
little  garden,  ever  has  his  teeth  pulled  out  ?  Over  a 
plate-glass  shop  window  is  "Plumber,  undertaker, 
removals,  artistic  house  decoration,"  and  within  are 
coffins  and  tombstones.  He  thinks  that  no  other 
people  in  the  world  treats  death  as  we  do.  He  passes 
cozy,  mysterious  houses,  more  secret  than  any  in  any 
other  town,  and  strange  temperance  hotels,  still  with 
dead  little  front  gardens,  and  he  wonders  whether 
there  is  anything  like  them  anywhere  else  in  the 
world.  He  walks  down  another  street,  without  front 
gardens  this  time  but  with  areas,  and  it  is  as  wonder- 
ful. Sleek  comfort  keeping  to  itself  was  never  so 
well  written  on  a  house  front.  In  his  dream  each 
house  is  a  fat  cat,  tabby,  tortoiseshell — maroon  or 
dusty  green — purring  to  itself  as  it  looks  at  the  trees 
of  the  square  where  three  people  go  a  day.  He 
understands  at  last  that  this  is  unique  as  almost 
everything  is  in  London.  He  goes  on  to  neat,  clean 
and  bright  cottages  with  green  woodwork,  shiny 
brass,  white  curtains,  and  with  not  even  an  eye  of  a 
window  open  on  to  the  street,  and  he  finds  these  also 
unique.  They  are  the  pictm-e  of  English  gentility, 
funny  but  worthy  of  some  respect.  That  is  just  how 
the  English  gentleman  behaves  and  clothes  himself, 
and  these  restrained  shy  house-fronts,  hiding  comfort 

38 


LONDON 

that  costs  rent-rolls  or  company  promoting,  are  the 
image  of  the  Englishman  who  roams  calmly  over  the 
world.  Fewer  steps  in  London  take  the  explorer 
from  genteeler  peace  to  a  busier  roar  than  in  any 
other  town  in  Europe.  In  the  midst  of  it  he  finds 
the  old  women,  the  pavement  artists,  the  kerbstone 
pedlars  that  only  London  knows,  quite  quiet  and 
resigned  beside  the  rush.  Once  he  might  have  met 
a  string  of  sandwich  men  whose  backs  and  chests 
were  branded,  *'  Watch  the  new  hop,"  and  whose 
legs  did  it  steadily  in  the  pouring  rain.  He  comes 
upon  the  horrors  of  half-Haussmannised  London. 
How  could  a  town  have  misunderstood  itself  so 
badly  ?  Every  other  would  have  known  better  what 
suited  it.  The  evil  Haussmann  did  has  lived  after 
him  in  Paris,  his  ghost  has  done  no  good  at  all  in 
London.  The  Avenue  de  I'Opdra  can  never  be  a 
pleasant  street ;  the  destroyers  of  the  old  Strand 
proved  utterly  stupid  ignorance  of  the  character  of 
London.  They  had  not,  no  doubt,  the  slightest  idea 
that  London  has  or  had  any  character  at  all.  The 
explorer  is  glad  of  the  Embankment,  but  sorry  that 
no  Londoner  ever  looks  at  the  Thames,  where  the 
seagulls  swarm  screeching.  No  Parisian  crossing  the 
Pont  des  Arts  but  at  least  gives  a  glance  upstream 
at  the  little  Seine  with  its  precious  setting ;  the 
kingly  Thames  is  dead  from  Putney  to  the  docks. 
Southwards  the  train  takes  the  explorer  over  what 
how  many  Londoners   understand   to   be  the  most 

39 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

tragic  looking  places  in  Europe  ?  The  approaches  to 
Paris  are  perhaps  even  more  disagreeable  because 
they  have  not  the  same  richness  of  horror.  Back, 
with  the  wonderful  crowd  in  the  Tube.  There  is  no 
other  hke  it  in  Europe,  stohd,  wooden,  and  yet  living, 
ugly  faces,  bad  teeth,  silly  eyes  in  plenty,  more  than 
in  any  other  European  town  crowd,  yet  sometimes 
faces  with  a  strange  spirit  and  courage  in  them  that 
have  their  exact  like  nowhere  else.  The  faces  go 
down  into  the  street  in  the  steady  rain  to  drink  in 
the  ugliest  illuminations  any  honestly  patriotic  town 
ever  put  up  to  honour  the  close  of  an  Imperial  day, 
the  brave  feet  tramp,  the  simple  hands  clap,  the  child 
voices  cheer  at  the  hideous  colours  and  designs  as  the 
rain  pours  down.  Keeping  dry  in  their  houses,  the 
"  better  class  "  look  once  or  twice  out  of  window : 
"  What  a  mob  ;  miserable  wretches — miserable  idea 
of  amusement."  Whose  fault  is  it  the  idea  is  miser- 
able ?  Publicly  deride  London  decorating  herself 
and  you  are  unpatriotic  ;  admire  what  alone  is  worth 
admiring  on  a  coronation  night,  the  London  crowd, 
and  you  are  a  simpleton. 

The  Parisian  in  London  goes  indoors  and  dis- 
covers a  London  Londoners  have  never  seen.  He 
had  never  dreamt  of  it  himself.  When  he  thinks 
of  Paris,  he  might  be  looking  far  back  at  a  little 
town  by  the  river  shore  with  peaceful  citadel,  coy 
and  quiet.  Here  he  is  in  such  a  storm  as  he  had 
never  imagined.     He  is  tossed  from  dancing-girl  to 

40 


LONDON 

duchess,  and  all  his  social  ideas  go.  Here,  in  this 
Conservatism,  where  there  are  several  things  "  one 
never  does,"  he  finds  so  many  things  done  that  no 
one  ever  thought  of  doing  in  his  far,  demure, 
anarchist  Paris.  Where  are  classes,  forms,  morals 
here  ?  A  duchess  is  overjoyed  to  have  a  ballet  girl 
to  dinner,  a  "  rapin  "  throws  the  handkerchief  round 
like  a  pasha,  dozen  of  peers  called  by  the  best-sound- 
ing Saxon  or  Norman  names  seem  no  more  thought 
of  than  if  they  were  money-lenders.  Some  actresses 
are  too  respectable  to  allow  themselves  to  be  seen  in 
the  drawing-rooms  of  the  aristocracy ;  others,  who 
have  had  as  many  lovers  as  any  French  "  consoeur," 
peeresses  run  after.  The  language  of  drawing-rooms 
that  really  are  the  right  thing  sounds  extraordinarily 
like  that  of  bargees,  with  slight  differences  which 
the  Parisian  is  not  well-practised  enough  to  dis- 
tinguish. The  duchess'  girl  friends  are  divorced  in 
undefended  suits,  and  the  duchess  hails  "  promotion  " 
when  the  co-respondents,  bound  to  marry,  are  smarter 
than  the  ex-husbands.  The  Parisian  feels  himself  in 
a  wild  whirl :  he  came  from  a  village  where  duchesses 
never  know  actresses,  where  a  wife  can  do  anything 
but  divorce,  let  alone  be  divorced,  where  "  le  monde  " 
is  one  thing,  and  all  that  is  not  it  is  another  thing. 
Here  Lady  Blanche  Blank-Blank  is  delighted  to 
dance  in  music-halls,  while  the  husband  she  is  sup- 
posed to  have,  and  who  never  says  a  word,  serves  his 
country  in   the  Foreign  Office  or  the  War   Office. 

41 


THE  FREXCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

This  is  the  great  new  London  which  the  Parisian 
discovers  and  the  Londoner  has  never  noticed. 

A  dull  London  the  Parisian  expected — grey  like 
the  fog  on  the  Thames,,  sleepy  Uke  steady  London 
rain — and  he  finds  liimself  thro\sTi  from  excitement 
to  excitement.  The  very  word  "  excitement "'  is  an 
English  invention ;  no  other  people  using  Latin 
derivatives  uses  any  kindred  word  in  the  same  sense 
or  as  often.  The  Parisian  finds  that  London  Society 
lives  only  to  be  excited,  and  has  only  one  principle  of 
hfe,  motion,  bodily  or  mental.  Probably  ten  times 
as  much  mileage  is  done  by  London  Society  in 
motor:,  or  trains  every  week-end  than  the  society  of 
any  other  capital  does  in  a  season.  The  wild  rush  of 
every  one,  as  if  the  de^dl  drove,  is  what  first  of  all 
amazes  the  Parisian.  The  fast  people  he  knew  at 
home  thought  it  an  immense  sport  to  go  do^vn  to  the 
chateau  for  December,  after  asking  a  carefully  pre- 
pared Hst  of  guests.  In  England  he  is  surprised  to 
find  that  fists  of  invitations  never  take  more  than 
five  minutes  to  prepare,  and  that  no  one  is  asked  or 
answers  except  by  telegi'am.  The  sedate  slowTiess  of 
Paris  is  what  he  looks  back  on  now  with  astonish- 
ment. He  came  to  meet  a  mentally  deliberate 
London  society,  and  finds  it  tumbling  over  itself  to 
be  quick. 

He  finds  social  revolution,  customs  in  pieces, 
fashions  beyond  any  Paris  dares,  ideas  Paris  has  tired 
of,  fads  in  art,  in  music,  in  literature  Paris  dropped 

42 


LONDON 

ten  years  ago,  habits  and  manners  Paris  will  not 
dream  of  yet  ten  years  hence,  some  political  crazes 
Paris  has  forgotten  and  some  Paris  has  not  yet 
thought  of,  and  through  all  the  jumble  of  new  lamps 
and  old,  worn-out  mental  games  and  anarchist  social 
games,  London  rushes,  always  excited,  never  solemn 
— preserve  it  from  that.  Either  discovering  ancient 
novelties  or  breaking  its  own  self  up  with  cheery 
unconsciousness,  London  society  must  always  be  gay. 
Gulled  by  intellectual  quacks  and  art  charlatans,  or 
steeped  in  its  own  dissolvent  sports,  it  is  always 
amused.  It  is  the  most  amused  society  in  Europe. 
The  terror  of  London  lest  it  be  not  amused  and  be 
not  amusing  is  an  amusement  in  itself.  London 
drawing-rooms,  like  some  London  pubs,  ought  to 
post  up,  "  Keep  smiling."  Laugh  before  you  speak, 
laugh  before  you  think ;  when  you  have  done  both  or 
either,  laugh  again.  Welcome  as  if  it  were  a  great 
joke  to  welcome,  greet  the  welcome  as  if  it  were  an 
even  greater  joke  to  be  welcomed,  and  part  on  a  roar. 
Introduce  boisterously,  and  be  buoyant  when  intro- 
duced. Laugh  through  dinner.  Always  amuse  and 
be  amused.  Remember  that  the  only  cardinal  virtue 
is  a  sense  of  humour,  and  that,  saving  some  lingering 
vestiges  of  English  prudery,  rien  n'est  sacre  pour 
un  sapeur.  Paris  dinners,  where  people  all  shout 
together,  are  solemn  by  comparison.  About  three 
Rabelaisian  topics  and  two  gay  are  allowed :  outside 
that  the  number  of  things  not  to  be  made  fun  of  is 

48 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

perhaps  unlimited.  It  is,  in  fact,  not  proper  to 
amuse  people  or  to  be  amused  by  them ;  they  suspect 
you  of  laughing  at  them,  and  irony,  which  is  the  only 
tone  of  conversation  London  society  will  stand,  is  the 
one  Paris  society  is  most  suspicious  of.  The  Parisian 
in  London  society  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  Paris 
is  the  last  refuge  of  simplicity. 

When  he  gets  out  of  London  society  into  think- 
ing London,  its  variations  surprise  him  instantly,  for 
he  is  accustomed  to  so  much  more  constancy  at 
home.  Here  he  is  thrown  from  forgotten  depths  to 
unsuspected  heights,  and  looks  alternately  blank  at 
rawness  and  with  fire  at  delicacy.  He  feels  so  often 
the  teacher,  but  now  and  then  he  is  confessed  the 
learner.  The  variations  of  thinking  London  are 
much  wider  than  those  of  thinking  Paris.  A  calcu- 
lation might  prove  the  level  the  same  in  the  two,  but 
the  former  is  generally  the  less  intelligent,  and  the 
latter  sometimes  is  much  the  less  sensitive.  London 
makes  howlers  Paris  is  incapable  of;  once  in  a  blue 
moon  London  understands  things  Paris  is  incapable 
of  understanding.  The  all-round  intelligence  of  Paris 
is  certainly  higher,  but  rare  flashes  of  London  intelli- 
gence beat  it. 

The  incomprehension  of  London  is  very  wide.  It 
lies  equally  over  the  ornaments  of  life  and  the  matter 
of  life.  Beauty  is  its  first  victim.  Moralising  on  art 
is  as  persistent  under  changed  fashions  as  when 
Ruskin's   sure   eye   and   splendid    word    served    his 

44 


LONDON 

crooked  judgment.  It  seems  almost  an  impossibility 
for  the  English  critic  to  assume  that  simple  attitude, 
which  every  Frenchman  has  long  since  had  to  if  he 
would  keep  his  job,  and  look  first  of  all  at  the  thing 
he  sees,  not  at  what  moral  purpose  he  thinks  he  can 
see  in  it.  He  is  constantly  pleading,  without  under- 
standing that  he  does  it,  for  the  artist  who  meant 
well  and  did  less  well.  If  the  colour  of  a  picture  be 
ugly,  who  but  a  London  critic  will  care  if  the  painter 
had  a  beautiful  idea  to  express  ?  The  Tate  gallery  is 
half  full  of  moral  purposes  without  beauty.  Why 
pretend  that  the  colour  and  form  of  so  many  of 
Watts'  pictures  are  beautiful  ?  Because  the  painter 
had  great  ideas.  Why  deny  that  Holman  Hunt's 
colour  is  usually  ugly  ?  Because  he  also  meant  some- 
thing when  he  painted.  Those  are  reasons  only 
London  can  be  intellectually  satisfied  with.  Other 
places  would  have  the  simplicity  to  say  that  if  a 
painter  can't  put  his  beautiful  ideas  in  beautiful  paint 
he  had  better  find  some  other  way  of  expressing  them , 
When  the  Parisian  says  this,  London  calls  him  insular. 
He  is  not  indeed  called  so  when  he  shrieks  at  the 
architectural  monuments  defacing  poor,  picturesque, 
homelike  London.  The  Londoner  grips  him  by  the 
hand  when  they  look  at  the  Queen  Victoria  Memorial 
together  and  tremble.  But  in  Paris  at  least  when 
they  put  up  a  grotesque  wedding-cake  to  Gambetta 
in  the  courtyard  of  the  Louvre,  whose  well-bred  and 
majestic   stones   have   been   shocked   ever   since,  all 

45 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Paris  that  cares  for  beauty  cries  out  and  goes  on 
crying  out.  The  Httle  part  of  London  that  cares 
suffers  dumbly  and  goes  on  suffering  dumbly.  The 
childlike  perversities  of  Presidents  of  the  Royal 
Academy  are  suffered  in  almost  the  same  silence ; 
official  French  art  cannot  help  hearing  roared  every 
day  what  real  French  art  thinks  of  it.  But  this  may 
of  course  show  less  the  incomprehension  than  the 
discretion  of  London. 

The  matter  of  life  is  treated  by  thinking  London 
greatly  by  the  method  which  the  French  call  that  of 
breaking  open  a  door  which  nobody  shut.  Americas 
are  very  often  discovered.  That  there  is  a  breach 
between  him  who  pays  and  him  who  is  paid  is  found 
out.  That  woman  and  man  are  of  different  sexes  is 
suddenly  understood.  In  political  questions  and  in 
social  questions,  which  will  be  the  only  political 
questions,  even  thinking  London  cannot  always  con- 
quer the  rooted  intellectual  shyness  of  the  average 
English  mind ;  here,  even  bold  English  thought 
almost  always  stops  short  of  the  whole  hog :  thinking 
Paris  always  goes  it.  Thinking  Paris,  in  its  in- 
tellectual gymnastics,  which  are  quite  apart  from  the 
practice  of  its  life,  is  therefore  often  not  realist.  But 
thinking  London  is  stopped  not  always  by  the  prac- 
tical sense ;  what  is  more  serious  is  that  it  is  often 
stopped  from  travelling  to  conclusions  by  sheer 
temperamental  incapacity  to  venture  thither.  Paris 
rushes  to  them  without  a  misgiving.     Thinking  Paris 

46 


LONDON 

and  thinking  London  arguing  separately  upon  politics 
and  social  questions  are  remarkably  different,  con- 
sidering both  in  the  long  run  think  much  the  same 
thing.  The  latter  is  nearly  always  delayed  on  the 
road  by  contingencies  and  tactical  questions ;  Home 
Rule  intrudes  upon  labour  problems,  party  tactics 
upon  principles.  The  former  has  long  since  jettisoned 
parties  and  their  tactics,  leaving  them  to  "pure" 
politicians.  Syndicalism  is  no  new  monster,  but  only 
English  Trade  Unionism  logically  thought  by  French 
Trade  Unionists,  who  have  not  a  tenth  part  of 
English  Trade  Unionists'  material  power,  but  have 
the  power,  or  the  violent  instinct,  to  drive  straight  to 
conclusions.  Political  parties  have  been  dropped  on 
the  way  long  since  by  thinking  Paris.  The  new 
English  campaign  against  the  party  system,  a  cam- 
paign which  is  partly  a  cloak  to  reaction  and  partly 
just  a  pleasing  game,  would  be  quite  needless  in 
France. 

Even  thinking  London  is  really  still  wondering 
what  man  and  woman  are.  It  is  always  learning 
amazing  things  about  the  sexes,  it  is  constantly  dis- 
covering what  an  important  thing  sex  is.  Paris  may 
have  other  discoveries  to  make,  but  not  that.  Woman 
pursuing  man  ?  Marvellous  discovery.  Our  clean 
and  pure  English  girls  driven  by  the  sexual  instinct  ? 
Impossible.  The  instinct  stronger  possibly  in  that 
clean  pure  healthy  English  girl  of  to-day  than  in  any 
other  ?    Even  our  intellectuals  disHke  the  unpleasant 

47 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

paradox.  We  have  exhausted  art  and  philosophy 
and  social  problems,  but  we  really  are  not  yet  sure 
whether  sex  is  in  the  last  analysis  so  very  important 
after  all.  It  certainly  does  crop  up  constantly  in  a 
way  that  surprises  us,  but  when  we  lift  ourselves  into 
the  intellectual  sphere,  can  we  not  leave  it  behind  ? 
You  say  it  is  always  with  us  ?  You  surprise  us  ;  you 
may  be  right,  but  you  surprise  us. 

To  thinking  Paris  this  seems  either  strangely 
spiritual  or  strangely  childish.  That  any  thinking 
man  should  not  posit  sex  as  the  first  reality  of  all, 
before  ought  else  he  talked  about,  is  incredible  to  the 
French  mind.  The  perverted  sexual  fury  of  English 
"  suffragettes  "  is  to  some  extent  accounted  for  by  the 
strange  gaps  in  the  English  intellectual  grasp  of 
realities.  Are  we  the  only  intellectuals  in  the  world 
not  to  recognise  the  first  of  these  to  be  sex  ?  One 
has  only  to  listen  to  our  great  voice  of  the  streets  to 
know  that  the  plain  English  people  is  near  to  the 
earth  ;  it  is  thinking  London  that  is  furthest  away 
and  that  is  still  wondering  what  man  and  woman  are. 
'Arry  and  'Arriet  are  not ;  in  that  thinking  Paris  is  at 
one  with  'Arry  and  'Arriet. 

The  incomprehension  of  Paris  is  sometimes  very 
deep,  not,  we  hope  (unless  we  despair  either  of  man- 
kind or  of  this  world)  because  it  looks  the  facts  of  life 
in  the  face.  Some  minds  understand  the  sky  and 
keep  their  roots  in  the  earth.  If  tliere  be  any  such 
collective  minds,  they  are  not  those  of  Paris  and  of 

48 


LONDON 

London.  The  mind  of  Paris  sometimes  fails  beyond 
grace.  It  understands  everything — except  the  one 
thing,  not  to  understand  which  is  damnation ;  it 
understands  ahnost  as  far  as  one  can  understand,  but 
not  "  to  the  ends  of  being."  It  is  supremely  intelli- 
gent, and  now  and  then  understands  nothing.  Think- 
ing London  very  often  misunderstands  most  things, 
but  sometimes  understands  everything.  Thinking 
Paris  is  entirely  shut  to  mysticism,  thinking  London 
is  not  on  the  whole  intelligent,  but  has  flashes  of 
divination.  A  William  Blake  never  could  and  never 
will  affect  even  thinking  Paris.  A  very  small  part  of 
London  is  affected  by  him.  Paris  will  always  stick 
at  his  chaotic  technique  and  ask,  how  did  this  man 
paint  and  draw,  without  going  on  to  think  what  he 
thought.  There  is  a  truth  in  this  attitude,  often 
valuable,  and  priceless  when  all  save  the  greatest  are 
considered,  but  it  is  a  fatal  one  towards  some  very 
few.  Trust  Paris  judging  Holman  Hunt,  but  trust  a 
tiny  part  of  London  judging  Blake.  Thinking  Paris 
never  will  understand  mysticism  ;  one  almost  believes 
that  thinking  London  never  really  will  understand 
anything  else. 

Even  below  that  level  Paris  sometimes  fails  before 
London.  With  all  its  inartistic  sense,  London  some- 
times does  good  things,  builds  for  instance  sometimes 
well,  when  left  to  itself  and  not  taken  in  hand  by  the 
fatally  grandiose  ambitions  of  neo-Haussmanns,  builds 
a  charming  cottage  here  and  there  or  small   town 

49  E 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

house,  such  as  Paris  has  never  been  capable  of 
turning  out,  and  makes  some  of  its  new  further 
suburbs  pleasant  with  plain  green  gardens  and  quiet 
houses,  while  Paris  builders  are  making  Paris  suburbs 
daily  more  hideous.  With  all  its  superficialness 
London  sometimes  produces  subtle  things,  and  some 
London  humour  remains  incomprehensible  to  a 
Parisian  who  knows  his  London  by  heart ;  I  do  not 
think  any  Parisian  humour  remains  incomprehensible 
to  the  Londoner  who  knows  his  Paris  by  heart. 
London  has  flashes  of  taste  and  bursts  of  refinement. 
London  even  has,  in  inspired  moments  and  patches,  a 
sincerity  Paris  to-day  knows,  if  at  all,  more  rarely 
and  more  scarcely.  There  are  London  cranks  the 
Parisian  must  bow  to,  because  he  could  not  find  the 
heart  to  be  of  them. 


50 


PARIS 


IV 

PARIS 

Paris  certainly  knows  Paris  better  than  London 
knows  London.  Yet  the  discovery  of  Paris  by  the 
Londoner  might  even  teach  the  Parisian  something 
about  Paris.  It  is  a  discovery  in  three  steps.  The 
man  discovering  the  bright  husk  of  Paris  is  still  very 
fresh,  but  Parisians  should  not  sneer  at  him.  The 
streets,  the  cafes,  the  life  of  the  pavement,  the 
women's  get-up  and  make-up,  the  eager  and  sharp 
men,  Montmartre,  polished  vice :  it  all  means  so 
much  more  to  him  than  to  Paris  herself,  who  has 
so  long  taken  it  all  for  granted.  Paris,  rather 
dejected,  rather  severe,  has  long  since  ceased  to  be 
able  to  see  herself  as  he  sees  her ;  it  might  be  good 
for  Parisians  to  look  at  even  Montmartre  with  the 
fresh,  astonished,  upset,  shocked,  excited  new-comer's 
eyes.  The  solid  Paris  is  a  second  and  greater  reve- 
lation to  him.  Every  other  reviewer  of  a  former 
volume  of  mine  recalled  that  the  French  have  no 
word  for  "  home  "  before  acknowledging  very  kindly 
my  effort  to  show  they  had  the  thing.  "English 
people  with  naive,  romantic  and  honest  faces  quite 

53 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

different  from  the  faces  outside  in  the  street "  (of 
Paris)  is  a  fooHsh  sentence  in  an  often  real  and 
sometimes  fine  EngHsh  novel.  That  the  French 
actually  have  homes,  that  French  homes  are  much 
tighter  castles  than  the  English,  that  just  as  honest 
faces,  if  you  look  at  them,  are  to  be  seen  at  Mont- 
martre  as  at  Brixton,  that  Paris  works  harder  than 
London,  if  it  amuses  itself  (and  especially  amuses 
London)  more,  that  average  Parisian  society  is  more 
respectable  than  average  London  society,  that  the 
Faubourg  St.  Germain  is  a  quiet  village  compared 
with  INIayfair,  and  that  a  portion  of  Paris  may  some 
day  be  the  last  refuge  of  Londoners  looking  for 
simplicity,  is  a  discovery  which  the  Englishman 
always  ends  by  making  if  he  has  the  chance,  though, 
until  he  has  made  it,  the  idea  that  he  eventually  will 
seems  ludicrous  to  him. 

The  third  discovery  of  Paris  is  that  of  an  intel- 
ligent Paris  or  France,  intellectual  France  being 
in  great  part  Paris.  The  discovery  of  a  solid  Paris 
is  amusing  enough  to  the  onlooker  observing  the 
discovery;  the  man,  the  Englishman  in  this  case, 
discovering  intelligent  France  is  still  more  enter- 
taining. He  is  an  enthusiast  at  once  and  intolerant 
straight  off.  He  will  not  hear  of  the  France  of 
Laurence  Sterne,  or  of  Stevenson's  which  is  akin. 
The  gentlest  irony  annoys  him,  and  the  slightest 
breath  of  condescension  from  masculine  England  to 
feminine  France  throws  him  into  a  fury.     Delightful 

54> 


PARIS 

Englishman — for  he  is  an  EngHshman  still :  no  other 
people  has  brought  forth  men  thus  to  be  champions 
of  other  peoples.  He  is,  of  course,  right  in  his  way. 
Many  English  attitudes  towards  the  French,  and 
attitudes  of  thinking  English  minds,  are  exasperating, 
and  the  French  intelhgence  when  it  once  begins  is 
astounding:  that  is  our  uninsular  Englishman's  dis- 
covery. One  can  honestly  with  him  admire  the 
French  mind.  It  has  thought  the  world  out  with 
a  precision  to  which  we  wander-minds  cannot  hope 
to  attain ;  it  has  summed  up  life  with  a  deadly 
exactness  of  which  we  vague  idealists  are  incapable ; 
it  has  conceived  reality  with  a  force  such  as  we 
dreamers  have  brought  only  to  the  conception  of 
dreams.  It  has  thought  precisely  and  we  have 
thought  vaguely,  it  has  defined  and  we  have 
shadowed,  it  has  settled  and  we  have  disturbed.  It 
has  made  for  its  thought  a  garment  which  is  the 
best  fit  of  all  languages ;  no  style  in  the  world  says 
what  it  wants  to  say  as  well  as  that  of  Renan, 
Maupassant,  M.  Anatole  France.  If  the  French 
mind  is  the  clearest,  the  French  tongue  is  the 
neatest  in  the  world. 

The  EngHshman's  discovery  of  the  French  intelli- 
gence through  the  French  tongue  is  naturally  an 
interesting  adventure.  The  French  mind  does  so 
well  so  many  things  that  the  English  does  so  ill. 
What  you  will  never  get  a  Frenchman  to  under- 
stand is  that  the  Englishman  on  this  discovery  may 

55 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

not  have  stopped  to  think  what  things  the  French 
mind  fails  in  while  the  English  succeeds.  The  suc- 
cesses of  the  French  intelligence  catch  the  eye  and 
convince  at  once,  they  do  not  woo  and  persuade,  they 
are  brilliant  and  not  to  be  denied.  The  English 
mind  is  shyer  at  shining  and  making  its  point ;  the 
French  is  confident  and  rapid.  In  criticism  it  never 
stops  short  of  a  general  theory ;  when  it  is  creative 
it  simplifies  and  outlines.  Its  work  in  philosophy 
and  literature  has  perhaps  almost  solely  been  clearing 
the  air,  which  other  minds  filled,  often  with  vapours, 
and  it  has  cleared  triumphantly.  It  has  boiled  down 
metaphysical  systems  to  a  few  epigrams,  classified 
the  universe  in  two  or  three  bons  mots,  it  has  pruned, 
weeded  out,  trimmed  the  wild  garden  of  men's 
thoughts.  In  the  consistent  desire  to  know  every- 
thing but  to  know  everything  clearly  (which  to 
others  means  knowing  wholly  only  parts  of  a  few 
things)  it  has  made  a  literary  criticism  which  is 
probably  the  most  philosophical,  a  dramatic  poetry 
which  is  probably  the  most  limited  and  narrow,  a 
poetry  which  is  probably  the  most  pedestrian,  a 
romance  which  is  probably  the  most  finished,  an 
intelligent  environment  which  is  probably  the  most 
intelligent.  In  the  limits  within  which  the  French 
mind  has  worked,  its  work  has  been  perfect.  It  has 
been  perfectly  critical,  it  has  created  the  pattern  of 
well-reasoned  drama  and  verse  and  the  most  judicious 
poems,  the  subtlest  and  best-thought-out  novels,  the 

56 


PARIS 

model  of  an  intelligently  self-sufficing  world.  It  is 
this  world  which,  sooner  than  anything  else  of  intel- 
ligent France,  attracts  the  English  mind.  French 
critics  critics  borrow  from,  French  dramatists  "  French 
scholars  "  pretend  to  like,  French  poets  are  almost 
always  misunderstood,  French  novelists  cannot  be 
known  until  French  life  is  known ;  the  intelligent 
French  world,  the  intelligent  Paris  convinces  at  once 
the  moment  it  is  really  known.  The  admiration  of 
the  Englishman  coming  really  into  it  is  touching. 
Probably  the  modern  world  offers  no  such  examples 
of  conquest  and  worship. 

The  French  mind  captures  some  English  minds, 
intelligent  Paris  captures  some  intelligent  Londoners, 
almost  as  conquered  Greece  captured  the  conquering 
Latins.  In  the  first  joy  of  surrender  the  English 
mind  yields  itself  up  completely.  How  often  and  in 
what  various  forms  the  observer  sees  this  surrender ! 
The  French  wrote  of  the  "  superiority  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxons  " — in  football,  public  schools,  and  non-pay- 
ment of  M.P.'s.  Some  English  go  about  to  be 
champions  of  the  French  intelligence.  This  is  some- 
times in  them  the  pride  that  apes  humility — need  we 
always  after  all  be  so  confoundedly  astonished  because 
we  find  our  neighbours  no  fools  ? — but  it  is  often 
real  meekness.  The  English  discovery  of  the  French 
intelligence  is  accomplished  in  several  stages.  In 
Paris  it  begins  with  "Parisianism."  One  cannot 
count  the  times  the  boulevard  has  been  discovered 

57 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

since  it  ceased  to  exist.  Abolish  capital  punishment  ? 
Let  Messieurs  the  assassins  begin.  Journalism?  it 
leads  to  everything  provided  you  get  out  of  it.  How 
long  will  the  delightful  Englishman  go  on  discovering 
the  epigrams  of  Alphonse  Karr  and  Villemessant  and 
of  dozens  of  other  dead  boulevardiers  of  the  dead 
boulevards,  Aurelien  Scholl  ("  Christians  are  travellers 
bound  for  nowhere,  but  by  a  beautiful  road"), 
Arsene  Houssaye,  Henri  Rochefort,  who  is  still  alive. 
Parisianism,  which  every  Parisian  says  is  dead, 
killed  by  cosmopolitanism,  but  which  on  the  contrary 
unhke  the  boulevards  is  still  alive,  must  indeed  still 
attract.  It  says  as  quick  things  as  that "  Londonism  " 
which  has  never  yet  been  given  such  a  name,  and 
some  which  last  longer.  Perhaps  Londonism  (to 
stick  to  the  coined  name)  is  sharper,  funnier,  wittier, 
but  though  it  cuts  neatly,  it  does  not  cut  so  deeply  ; 
it  is  comic  and  does  not  try  to  be  more  than  comic  ; 
it  plays  with  words  well,  but  more  with  words  than 
with  ideas,  or  if  it  plays  with  ideas  takes  standard 
ideas  to  shake  them  up  into  new  puzzles,  but  does 
not  find  its  humour  at  the  back  of  its  thoughts. 
Parisianism  is  not  intrinsically  witty  or  humorous ; 
it  must  always  be  light  and  must  always  amuse,  but 
it  claims  not  only  to  ^amuse.  In  London  after  all  if 
you  amuse  you  are  not  called  upon  to  do  more. 
Parisianism  is  required  to  go,  not  very  deeply,  but 
deeper.  It  is  expected  not  to  joke  merely  to  be 
funny,  and  humour  for  the  sake  of  humour,  fancy  for 

58 


PARIS 

fancy's  sake,  are  foreign  to  it  and  stared  at.  It  must 
laugh,  but  the  laugh  must  leave  something  behind, 
sometimes  bitter,  sometimes  cruel,  sometimes  thought- 
ful. Fun  is  seldom  poked  at  men  without  some 
sting  ;  things  are  not  to  be  laughed  over  without  an 
afterthought.  Parisianism  delights  in  by-thrusts  at 
essential  things  when  the  main  business  seems  to  be 
fun,  and  cares  little  for  fun  which  keeps  steadily  to 
its  own  ground.  The  game  of  being  serious  suddenly 
and  accidentally  in  the  midst  of  banter  is  one  at 
which  Parisianism  plays  very  well.  Londonism  can 
be  wittier  and  can  keep  its  dry  smile  for  hours  with 
amazing  resourcefulness ;  it  does  not  throw  out  of 
its  fun  the  same  abrupt  feelers  for  reality.  Parisianism 
has  a  particular  talent  for  being  serious  lightly,  dash- 
ing its  jokes  with  its  philosophy  of  living,  making 
fun  out  of  its  earnestness.  An  epigram,  an  immense 
laugh,  a  pun,  and  the  fourth  phrase  has  made  a 
sudden  spring  at  the  ontological  proof  of  the  ex- 
istence of  God  ;  spite  tearing  a  poet's  reputation 
breaks  away  to  a  new  Ars  Poetica ;  guying  the 
latest  drama  of  sentiment  ends  in  each  man  telUng 
how  he  loved  best.  The  rapid  excursions  over, 
Parisianism  is  instantly  light  and  mocking  again.  Its 
characteristic  is  to  touch  lightly  upon  essential  things, 
to  amuse  itself  with  what  it  is  most  serious  about. 
Londonism  is  amused  with  amusement,  and  loves 
humour  for  itself. 

The  second  step  in  the  discovery  of  intelligent 

59 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Paris  is  from  the  boulevards  to  literary  workshops, 
the  third  from  writing  Paris  to  thinking  Paris.  Both 
are  interesting.  The  literary  way  of  looking  at  life 
is  nowhere  as  common  as  in  Paris,  life  is  nowhere  as 
much  thought  about.  It  is  not  exactly  the  same 
world  that  thinks  and  writes  ;  the  entrance  into  both 
is  agreeable.  .  .  .  "  Et  tout  le  reste  est  litterature," 
Verlaine  said,  but  the  literary  mania  well-developed 
has  its  value.  It  is  not  useless  to  look  at  things 
under  the  aspect  of  what  you  can  write  about  them. 
Nothing  worth  reading  may  be  written,  but  the 
things  have  been  looked  at  that  they  might  be  read 
about,  they  have  been  seen  at  least  objectively,  per- 
haps with  extra  keenness.  We  have  tried  to  stand 
away  from  life  for  a  moment  and  for  a  moment  to 
let  it  go  by  us ;  we  may  have  seen  nothing  that  any 
other  might  not  have  seen  and  we  may  step  into  the 
race  again  with  no  more  philosophy  than  we  had 
before,  still  we  shall  have  a  httle  more  than  those 
who  never  stood.  We  look  also  more  keenly  at 
things  in  one  way  at  least  when  we  mean  to  make 
words  out  of  them.  They  must  be  lopped  and 
pruned,  and  they  may  lose,  it  is  true,  what  most 
really  matters  in  them,  but  the  cliopping  and  clear- 
ing, even  wrong,  is  right  discipline.  This  discipline 
is  learnt  in  the  literary  workshops  of  Paris.  How  to 
undersay  things  when  so  many  oversay  them  is  one 
thing  learnt.  It  is  a  particularly  good  lesson  for 
the  Englishman  fresh  from  complacent  and  ambling 

CO 


PARTS 

English  novels.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  dry 
compression  of  Guy  de  INIaupassant,  the  rich  sum- 
ming up  of  M.  Anatole  France  should  conquer  him. 
The  intelligent  environment  which  produced  them,  or 
which  produced  the  habits  whence  they  came,  must 
then  sweep  him  in.  It  is  a  great  novelty  for  many 
men  to  learn  to  think  neatly,  to  weed  out  their 
minds,  to  jettison  much  good  for  the  sake  of  the 
better,  to  sacrifice  some  truths  for  the  clearer  truth, 
to  let  the  whole  truth  go  by  that  a  part  of  the  truth 
may  be  the  better  caught  and  fixed.  Intelligent 
Paris  writing,  or  thinking  of  writing  and  talking 
about  it,  is  probably  more  accustomed  than  any 
other  equal  medium  to  train  its  thought  to  discre- 
tion. The  exuberance  and  demonstrativeness  of 
Paris,  as  they  appear  to  some  new-comers,  are  of 
course  either  mere  inessential  flourishes  of  character 
or  else  traits  of  the  unthinking  and  uncultivated. 

The  educated  Parisian  who  has  at  all  lived  and 
thought  about  living  has  formed  for  himself  a  surer, 
if  often  narrower,  outlook  upon  the  world  than  most 
men.  His  view  of  everyday  things  is  definite  and 
secure.  He  has  built  his  own  little  organic  scheme 
of  the  universe  down  to  small  details  to  suit  himself, 
and  he  is  prepared  to  fit  whatever  comes  along  into 
it.  There  is  seldom  anything  which  he  cannot  place. 
He  is  rarely  to  be  surprised  even  by  big  things — or 
even  by  little  things.  He  has  learnt  to  look  upon 
life  as  a  work  of  art,  a  map,  a  table   of  contents, 

61 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

according  to  temperament.  A  philosophy  master  in 
Paris  year  after  year  urged  his  pupils  to  plan  their 
lives  in  advance  to  the  end,  and  on  a  blackboard  he 
planned  an  ideal  life  divided  by  braces  and  sub-braces, 
drawn  with  dashing  curves  in  chalk :  youth,  prime  of 
life,  middle-age,  old-age  ;  youth — observation,  self- 
control,  training  ;  prime  of  life — assimilation,  execu- 
tion, fatherhood;  middle-age — experience,  responsi- 
bility, meditation  ;  old-age — retrospection,  serenity, 
dissolution.  The  Philosophy  Master  has  by  now  had 
the  final  brace  filled  up  for  him,  I  believe  ;  I  wonder 
sometimes  how  many  of  his  pupils  followed  his  lesson 
and  mapped  out  their  lives  after  his  pattern  on  the 
blackboard,  and  which  brace  they  have  now  reached. 
Perhaps  among  the  boys  who  derided  him  more  learnt 
from  him  than  thought  they  would.  The  amazing 
man  who  could  at  twenty  have  mapped  his  life  on  a 
blackboard  as  it  worked  out  when  he  looks  back  upon 
it  at  sixty  is  probably  less  rare  in  France  than  else- 
where. This  is  less  a  quality  than  a  fault  in  the 
French,  whose  chief  sin  is  an  excess  of  reason.  But 
not  all  Frenchmen,  or  Parisians,  chalk  their  lives  out 
on  a  blackboard ;  there  is  perhaps  no  people  among 
which  a  life  is  more  often  considered,  consciously  and 
unconsciously,  as  a  work  of  art,  which  is  a  more 
organic  thing  than  a  table  of  contents.  Here,  also, 
there  is  reason  at  work,  but  often  instinctively.  A 
man,  only  half-consciously  no  doubt,  gives  form  to 
his  life  as  an  artist  to  his  handiwork,  and  in  what  he 

62 


PARIS 

comes  across  passes  by  what  does  not  suit  him  :  he 
chooses  among  the  new  material  which  experience 
brings,  retaining  only  what  fits  in  with  his  design. 
He  thus  lives  not  accepting  but  discriminating,  not 
passively  taking  what  life  has  to  give,  but  taking  from 
life  what  life  has  to  give  to  him  in  particular.  Art  is  a 
choice  ;  a  life  that  chooses  is,  whatever  it  choose,  in  so 
far  a  work  of  art.  The  artist  of  life  may  be  great ;  if 
mean,  he  is  still  to  be  called  an  artist.  Though 
narrow,  he  is  yet  an  artist,  and  perhaps  it  is  likely 
that  he  will  be  narrower  than  those  who  take  the 
whole  of  life  as  the  daffodils  take  the  winds  of 
March  with  beauty. 

In  shaping  his  life  he  forms  his  aspect  of  other 
lives,  and  he  often  narrows  both.  Perhaps  the  think- 
ing Parisian,  or  Frenchman,  limits  his  reading  of  the 
world  and  his  own  writing  in  the  world  more  than 
his  peers  elsewhere,  but  it  should  be  understood  that 
the  limitation  is  less  often  the  accident  of  ignorance 
than  the  result  of  a  system.  He  may  know  less,  not 
because  he  does  not  know,  but  because  he  does  not 
want  to  know.  The  insularity  of  the  Parisian  is  often 
misunderstood ;  he  is  shut  up  in  his  intelligent  Uttle 
world  because  he  shuts  himself  up  in  it,  not  because 
he  has  had  no  glimpses  of  worlds  without.  There  is 
a  great  difference  between  unconscious  ignorance  and 
a  deliberately  limited  outlook.  For  many  years  past 
the  Parisian  has  been  slowly  widening  his  outlook, 
but  his  principle  as  an  artist  in  life  remains  the  same : 

63 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

he  opens  his  eyes  to  all  sorts  of  strange  and  far 
things,  "  the  soul  of  the  English  "  and  American 
activities,  to  South  American  Republics  and  the 
vicissitudes  of  the  House  of  Lords,  but  this  is 
because  he  chooses  to  see  such  things,  not  because 
they  are  forced  upon  his  sight ;  at  least  he  thinks  so, 
and  a  man  may  know  his  own  mind.  He  takes  in 
these  wonderful  new  things,  but  fits  them  in  with 
what  he  had  already,  he  takes  them  in  only  as  they 
will  fit  in.  He  learns  what  will  teach  him  to  know 
himself  better  :  everything  is  grist  to  his  mill,  but 
only  grist  and  only  to  his  mill. 

To  attempt  making  an  art  of  living  goes  with  an  \ 
artist's  outlook  upon  the  rest  of  life.  The  Parisian  ^ 
who  is  an  artist  in  his  own  life  has  trained  himself  to 
look  as  an  artist  at  the  world.  The  literary  aspect  of 
the  world,  which  it  is  not  useless  to  consider,  has 
become  more  familiar  to  him  perhaps  than  to  any 
other  man.  The  literary  judgment  comes  to  him 
early,  is  almost  in  his  blood ;  he  is  almost  the  only 
man  in  the  street  able  without  an  effort  to  attain  at 
once  to  artistic  impartiality  in  the  judgment  of 
ordinary  things.  In  the  smallest  he  can  keep  to 
impartial  detachment ;  he  can  write  journalism  as  an 
art  and  read  it  as  one ;  he  can  look  at  a  murder,  a 
swindle,  a  political  crisis  impartially,  admire  a  beauti- 
ful crime,  after  Thomas  de  Quincey  who  was  not 
exactly  a  man  in  the  street,  condemn  a  chimsy 
scandal,  find  in  a  police-court  case  the  one  thing  that 

64 


PARIS 

gives  it  an  artistic  interest.  He  can  study  his 
criminals,  his  great  men,  his  poHticians,  as  an  artist 
studies  faces  to  draw.  Clemenceau  the  Hberal  ruUng 
with  a  rod  of  iron,  Briand  the  adapted  anarchist 
stamping  out  strikes,  he  can  consider,  not  even  merely 
as  artists  themselves,  but  as  works  of  art  turned  out 
by  the  handicraft  of  a  finely  imaginative  nature. 
Gambetta  he  can  look  upon  and  remember  as  a 
symbol  detached  from  the  man,  the  idiot  General 
Boulanger  could  be  to  him  a  rousing  sign  for  a 
moment,  a  moment  which  did  not  show  the  literary 
view  of  life  to  its  best  advantage.  He  can  watch 
a  big  murder  trial  as  he  would  a  play  with  good 
situations,  and  watch  the  murderer  guillotined  with- 
out moral  indignation,  without  virtuous  relish,  without 
much  horror  of  the  senses,  and  mainly  with  an  ex- 
traordinary readiness  to  receive  vivid,  but  impersonal 
impressions ;  the  sensitive  who  faint  may  find  after 
all  that  they  received  a  less  deep  and  lasting  im- 
pression than  he. 

Criticism,  to  which  the  ordinary  English  mind 
attains  only  by  a  superhuman  effbrt,  thus  comes  to 
him  almost  naturally.  The  Parisian  in  the  street  is 
an  artistic  critic.  He  has  overcome  the  great  diffi- 
culty of  the  English  mind,  which  is  to  look  at  a 
picture  without  asking  what  it  is  about,  to  consider 
a  criminal  and  remember  he  is  a  man,  to  study  a 
politician  apart  from  his  politics,  to  think  of  a  thing 
without  putting  a  moral  purpose  into  it.     The  whole 

65  F 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

secret  of  the  power  of  Parisian  literary  workshops  is 
the  existence  of  this  easy  and  generally  artistic  im- 
partiality. If  the  French  literary  artists,  M.  Anatole 
France,  Maupassant,  exist,  it  is  because  they  are 
directly,  easily  and  generally  understood.  It  would 
be  possible  nowhere  else  for  Bel  ami  to  be  so  well 
and  so  generally  understood.  To  come  into  an 
environment  where  Bel  ami,  a  more  ruthless  picture 
than  any  other  of  a  cruel  hideousness  which  exists  as 
ruthlessly  elsewhere  but  unpictured,  can,  not  by  a 
few  but  by  many,  be  read  without  moral  indignation, 
and  only  with  an  artist's  admiration  for  the  picture 
itself,  is  the  greatest  discovery  of  intelligent  Paris. 

The  dangers  of  discovering  intelligent  Paris  are 
perhaps  not  generally  understood,  for  they  are  not 
generally  withstood,  but  claim  easy  victims.  Parisian- 
ism  works  havoc  among  raw  English  minds.  We 
soon  find  them  out-Parisianing  Parisians.  Oh,  the 
bright  manner,  the  light  banter,  the  gay  glimpses  at 
serious  things,  the  lightning  judgments ;  alas !  the 
Gallic  gaiety,  the  hybrid  chatter,  the  "  mon  cher's," 
the  "epatant's,"  the  "et  voila's,"  showered  over 
English  talk  to  make  it  "  vivid  " ;  spare  us  the  verb- 
less  sentences  starting  off  with  an  adjective  written 
to  give  style  "  vivacity  "  ;  save  us  chiefly  from  the 
Parisian  way  witli  women,  the  flattery  that  goes  just 
too  far,  the  allusivcness  tliat  just  overshoots  the 
mark,  the  paying  court  that  just  pays  too  much,  that 
just  tips  too  high.     In  this  company  it  is  the  real 

66 


PARIS 

Parisian  that  becomes  phlegmatic,  bluff  and  down- 
right. Is  this  my  image  ?  he  asks,  and  sinks  gasping 
into  his  shell.  For  he  actually  has  a  shell,  though  he 
is  a  Parisian. 

The  French  literary  mind  makes  other  undis- 
cerning  disciples.  The  human  steadiness  behind  it 
is  not  perceived  and  it  is  taken  for  more  than  it  is 
meant  to  be.  It  is  promoted  to  a  philosophy  and 
its  excesses,  which  itself  in  its  sober  temper  rejects, 
are  called  its  principles.  That  the  literary  mania  is 
fatal,  not  to  morals,  but  to  literature,  is  not  under- 
stood :  the  artist's  egoism  kills,  not  society,  but  art. 
The  English  discoverer  of  the  French  literary  spirit 
does  his  find  to  death,  and  he  drives  us  back  to 
French  fleshly  sense  for  the  cure  of  French  litera- 
turitis.  Taking  up  the  literary  outlook  he  gives 
another  example  of  English  absoluteness.  He  can't 
be  held  back,  he  must  make  words  out  of  the  world, 
he  has  learnt  the  impartiality  of  French  criticism,  the 
world  is  a  thing  to  look  at  from  afar,  a  toy  to  play 
with  in  words,  the  world  is  copy,  "  la  litterature 
seule  existe."  But  Verlaine  answers  Mallarme  with 
*'  que  ton  vers  soit  la  bonne  aventure  "...  and  this 
is  above  mere  literature.  The  best  French  minds 
have  given  us  the  antidote  to  French  literaturitis, 
and  French  literaturitis  is  the  most  intelligent  in  the 
world.  Let  us  drink  the  excellent  poison,  but  the 
cure  too.  We  have  much  to  learn  from  the  French 
literary  spirit,  for  no  other  literature  has  bred  one 

67 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

as  complete :  that  learnt,  let  us  remember  the  higher 
spirit,  and  that  perhaps  English  poetry  more  than 
any  other  has  reached. 

At  its  highest  the  French  mind  has  dangers.  To 
say  the  French  mind  is  to  give  an  example  of  the 
danger  to  which  it  may  lead  us.  Is  there  a  French 
mind  ?  The  French  mind,  which  cannot  think  two 
thoughts  without  a  generalisation  in  the  third  place, 
answers  "  Of  course."  Unless  we  hesitate  when  we 
say  the  French  mind,  and  unless  we  admit  that  we 
may  be  sacrificing  the  particular  to  the  general  and 
trampling  on  the  individual,  we  shall  be  precisely 
committing  the  darling  sin  of  the  French  mind 
which  generalises  against  every  odds.  We  may 
say  there  is  a  French  mind,  making  reservations  ; 
the  French  mind  makes  none  proclaiming  itself. 
The  English  faculty  of  dissociation  is  foreign  to  it. 
The  English  mind  (granted  there  be  an  Enghsh 
mind)  can  carry  several  independent  thoughts  for  a 
lifetime  and  never  let  them  touch  one  another.  It 
can  hold  in  one  cup  beauty,  virtue,  sin,  strength,  the 
realities  and  the  dreams  of  life,  and  never  mix  them. 
This  may  be  a  peculiarly  English  faculty,  it  is  perhaps 
never  French.  The  French  mind  seems  hounded  by 
reason,  driven  to  unity.  In  the  highest  thought  of 
men  it  has  co-ordinated,  compared  and  deduced,  as 
in  the  common  world  it  lias  made  and  applied 
methods  of  living.  It  has  indeed  supplied  the 
standard  of  reason,  taught  men  how  to  think  most 

68 


PARIS 

safely  and  how  to  live  most  surely ;  it  is  the  world's 
regulator.  Let  us  not  be  over-regulated  by  it.  We, 
who  are  badly  balanced,  need  some  such  pendulum ; 
we  must  admire  its  steady  beat,  and  we  should  often 
stop  patiently  to  time  ourselves  upon  it.  The 
French  mind  can  teach  us  clear  and  weighty  reason. 
But  do  not  let  us  forget  our  own  unreason.  We 
must  not,  as  some  of  us  do,  worship  the  neat  map- 
ping out  of  the  world ;  it  is  a  wonderful  map,  but  it 
is  not  all  the  world.  The  admirably  clear  philosophy 
is  not  one  that  dreams  of  all  things  'twixt  Heaven 
and  earth.  The  French  mind  has  done  one  of  the 
most  useful  tasks  for  mankind,  clearing  the  air  ;  let 
us  admire  it  at  work  and  stand  amazed  before  the 
directest  and  surest  mind  in  mankind.  But  ours  is 
perhaps  another  task,  filling  the  air. 

The  Englishman  has  discovered  intelligent  Paris, 
Parisianism,  writing  Paris,  thinking  Paris :  lovable 
Englishman  I  He  loves  Parisianism  better  than 
his  own  humour,  writes  Gallicisms  and  thinks  neat 
French  thoughts.  He  leaves  the  English  world  of 
laughter  and  laughs  only  with  a  meaning  behind  his 
laugh,  and  he  loses  the  sense  of  nonsense.  His 
language  at  its  worst  paraphrases  the  "  Ballad  of 
Bouillabaisse,"  at  its  best  is  both  pruned  and  abstract, 
both  simplified  and  burthened.  He  has  learnt  to 
think  more  clearly  and  more  stiffly,  with  more  in- 
telligence and  less  feeling,  to  see  more  and  desire 
less. 

69 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

He  should  be  a  various  object-lesson  to  Parisians. 
He  discovered  the  gaiety  of  Paris,  and  Parisians  do 
not  always  know  that  Paris  is  gay.  He  next  dis- 
covered the  soHd  Paris,  and  Parisians  rarely  under- 
stand that  the  solid  Paris  is  not  seen  at  first  sight. 
At  last  he  discovered  thinking  Paris,  and  was  to  be 
held  up  as  an  awful  example  to  Parisians.  They 
could  see  in  him  how  intellectual  neatness  may 
narrow  the  mind,  how  the  too  nice  choice  of  life 
may  sterilise  life,  how  unreasonable  a  view  of  the 
universe  an  excess  of  reason  can  give.  He  learnt 
from  them  how  to  trim  his  thought,  plan  his  life 
and  define  his  faith.  He  might  have  taught  them 
guesswork,  wandering,  and  dreams. 


70 


POLITICS 


V 

POLITICS 

The  characteristic  of  English  public  affairs  in  the 
last  thirty  years  has  been  a  want  of  collective 
political  imagination,  while  individual  minds  and 
groups  of  minds  have  sometimes  been  brilliantly 
imaginative.  When  the  Grand  Old  Liberal,  whose 
mind  and  character  were  typical  of  all  the  best  con- 
servatism in  the  English  spirit,  made  what  seemed  to 
the  country  a  wild  flight  of  political  Quixotism,  and 
brought  in  his  Home  Rule  Bill,  no  one  in  the  least 
open  to  impressions  could  fail  to  be  caught  by  the 
sheer  beauty  of  the  narrow,  cast-iron,  generous  old 
man's  sudden  beat  of  his  wings.  An  Orangeman 
with  a  spark  of  imagination  must  have  admired,  if 
hated,  him.  Those  who  were  boys  at  the  time  still 
remember  being  stirred,  though  they  did  not  much 
understand,  and  "  Mr.  Gladstone  bringing  in  his 
Home  Rule  Bill  in  the  House  "  are  words  that  to 
them  still  have  a  sound  of  something  great.  The 
beauty  of  the  thing  escaped  the  country.  A  public 
with  imagination  would  have  felt  it  with  sudden 
warmth.     Hail  or  hate  the  Grand  Old  JNIan's  poUcy, 

73 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

but  love  the  beauty  of  his  flight,  not  take  up  or  kick 
away  the  "platform"  without  a  heart-beat.  The 
French  would  have  felt  the  emotion  of  the  moment 
in  a  flash.  It  is  exceedingly  Ukely  that  the  French 
never  would  have  dreamt  of  even  allowing  Home 
Rule  to  ,be  talked  about,  and  would  have  stamped 
out  Irish  Nationalism  long  ago.  But,  in  the  same 
circumstances,  they  would  have  instantly  felt  the 
G.O.M.'s  move  to  be  sudden  great  drama ;  it  would 
have  sent  a  spark  through  the  nation,  and  fired  the 
national  imagination. 

When  Imperialism  was  "invented,"  it  did  not 
genuinely  fire  public  imagination  in  the  British 
empire.  The  puffing  and  blowing  of  journalists  and 
others  in  the  effort  to  kindle  their  own  imaginations 
was  one  of  the  most  lamentable  sights  of  the  modern 
writing  world.  No  really  good  catch-words  were 
thought  of,  no  really  good  rhetoric  written.  To  be 
told  to  "  think  Imperially,"  to  be  preached  at  about 
abstract  "  efficiency,"  and  nothing  whatever  to  be 
efficient  for,  was  enough  to  put  men  of  taste  off'  from 
thinking  about  the  empire  at  all.  It  has  been  argued 
that  this  proved  Imperialism  hollow,  and  that  the 
reason  why  the  greatest  writers  wrote  badly  when 
they  wrote  "  Imperially  "  was  that  the  subject  itself 
was  a  bad  one.  The  argument  cannot  stand  for  a 
moment.  There  has  never  been  a  greater  political 
sham  than  the  first  French  empire,  but  it  kindled  the 
public   imagination    to   a   blaze.      Think   what   the 

74 


POLITICS 

Napoleonic  spirit  would  have  done  with  British 
Imperialism,  both  in  the  leaders  and  in  the  led. 
Think  of  the  gorgeous  rhetoric  of  the  Napoleonic 
proclamations  that  might  have  been  issued  from 
Downing  Street  to  the  four  corners  of  the  empire  in 
the  four  corners  of  the  earth.  And  think  how  the 
British  people,  had  it  had  the  same  temper  as  the 
French  people  under  Napoleon,  would  have  re- 
sponded. Napoleonic  era  literature  was  miserable, 
but  the  public  imagination  was  wonderfully  rich. 
The  imagination  of  British  Imperialists,  leaders  and 
led,  preachers  and  preached  at,  was  beggarly.  Tariff 
Reform  coming  out  of  Imperialism,  was  even  more 
dully  advertised.  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  had  some 
imagination  of  his  own ;  he  never  succeeded  in 
awakening  it  in  others. 

But  by  far  the  two  most  significant  things  within 
the  British  empire  during  the  past  quarter  of  a 
century  have,  of  course,  been  the  General  Election  of 
1906  and  the  union  of  South  Africa.  Both  show 
characteristics  of  the  English  public  temperament  to 
an  extraordinary  degree  in  different  ways ;  both 
afford  excellent  terms  of  comparison  with  the  French 
public  temperament.  The  union  of  South  Africa 
proved  the  want  of  public  imagination  throughout  an 
empire  as  nothing  ever  did  before  in  history.  Those 
who  saw  all  that  it  meant  looked  on  with  amaze- 
ment. Did  the  English  public  never  understand 
what    it    meant?      Have    the    English    no    public 

75 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

imagination  whatever  ?  Never  was  a  great  thing  done 
and  its  greatness  so  dully  slurred  over.  Here  was 
a  chance  for  patriotic  pride — never  a  better.  Who 
took  it  ?  What  English  poUtician  bragged  about 
this  great  thing  and  thanked  God  he  was  an  English- 
man because  of  it  ?  Who  even  talked  about  it,  even 
pretended  not  to  be  bored  by  it  ?  What  man  in  the 
street  thumped  his  chest  and  said  he  liad  now  at 
least  something  to  be  proud  of  his  country  for  ?  The 
only  things  we  do  well  we  may  do  in  a  shame-faced, 
hole-and-corner  way,  and  we  might  to  a  certain 
extent  be  proud  of  not  boasting.  The  unlucky  part 
is  that  we  do  boast  about  the  things  we  have  done 
more  or  less  badly.  We  contrived  to  boast  about 
the  Boer  War,  we  sometimes  boast  about  our  rule  in 
India,  and  not  a  man  to  brag  about  the  best  thing  we 
have  done  for  years.  We  do  not  seem  to  understand 
that  no  other  people  would  have  done  the  same 
thing,  whereas  probably  half  a  dozen  might  have 
managed  the  Boer  AVar  better,  and  one  or  two  might 
easily  rule  India  as  well  as  we.  What  we  have  done 
in  South  Africa  no  other  people  would  have  been 
idealist  enough  to  think  of  doing.  Any  who  had 
done  it  would  chant  for  ever  after  in  splendid  pride 
about  it.  We  innnediately  began  talking  about 
something  else.  Yet,  compared  with  it,  what  interest 
was  there  in  nmddly  education  measures,  in  tariffs, 
in  land  values,  in  bungs,  and  in  the  House  of  Lords  ? 
Imperialists   ignoring   it   as   nmch  as   possible  were 

7G 


POLITICS 

quite  in  order  by  the  rule  of  party  tactics  ;  but  it  was 
the  one  feather  the  Liberals  had  to  put  in  their  caps, 
and  they  never  wore  it.  I  do  not  think  they  were 
held  back  by  scruples,  but  rather  by  unintelligence. 
They  never  saw  the  real  beauty  of  the  thing  they 
had  in  great  part  done  themselves.  Such  want  of 
imagination  has  been  praised  ;  but  it  is  not  true  that 
doing  things  well  unconsciously  is  a  quality,  or  even 
that  it  is  not  a  fault.  If  you  don't  understand  what 
you  are  doing,  not  only  you  lose  most  of  the  credit 
for  doing  it  well,  but  the  chance  is  even  that  you  will 
do  it  ill  just  as  instinctively  next  time.  Had  the 
French  people  made  the  union  of  South  Africa  (it 
never  would  have  dreamt  of  making  it  after  the  Boer 
War),  it  would  have  understood  what  it  was  doing 
and  thought,  discussed  and  told  us  all  about  it.  The 
value  of  the  thing  would  be  known  completely  and 
accurately  prized ;  we  should  go  to  French  reasonings 
to  obtain  (allowing  for  the  national  patriotic  bias)  the 
true  and  full  philosophy  of  what  the  French  them- 
selves had  done.  This  would  perhaps  have  been  a 
less  modest  manner  than  ours,  but  intelligent  conceit 
is  better  than  unintelligent  modesty. 

The  state  of  the  English  public  mind  shown  by 
the  General  Election  of  1906  was  characteristically 
English.  The  "  discovery  "  by  the  middle-classes  of 
the  score  or  so  of  various  and  conflicting  ways  of 
social  thought  pleasantly  grouped  under  the  name 
of  Socialism,  was  one  of  the  most  curious  events  in 

77 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

modern  social  history.  "  Socialism  "  had  been  talked 
about  for  years,  and  the  business  classes  had  never 
heard  of  it.  Highgate  had  never  heard  of  Hyde 
Park;  more  than  that,  Russell  Square  had  had  no 
rumours  from  Upper  Woburn  Place.  The  "  S  ocialist " 
was  a  lunatic  from  foreign  parts,  or  an  Englishman 
with  a  red  tie  gone  wrong  under  foreign  influences. 
The  election  returned  a  Labour  Party  over  forty 
strong:  I  shall  not  forget  the  exploding  of  the 
bomb-shell  among  the  solid  classes  of  the  English 
people. 

When  the  childlike  solid  British  middle-classes 
discovered  socialism  in  1906  they  gave  one  an 
excellent  peg  to  hang  a  comparison  of  the  English 
and  French  political  temperaments  upon.  This  dis- 
covery was  only  a  detail,  but  it  set  one  thinking. 
The  French  bourgeoisie,  by  long  talking  of  itself 
into  familiarity  with  the  words  of  socialism,  had 
learned  to  know  it  for  a  tame  monster,  and  moderate 
conservatives  had  learned  to  call  themselves  Socialist- 
Radicals.  On  the  other  side  there  never  had  been 
any  Hyde  Park  Sundays  in  France,  and  what  upstart 
thinking  and  speaking  had  been  going  on  had  never 
been  ignored  by  the  classes  in  possession.  Socialism 
was  discovered  by  those  who  have  sooner  than  by 
those  who  have  not :  hence  the  strength  of  the 
French  Parliamentary  Socialist  Party  and  the  weak- 
ness of  French  trade  unions.  There  could  thus  be 
observed  at  once  the  greater  political  adaptability  of 

7a 


POLITICS 

the  French  and  the  greater  political  stolidity  of  the 
English ;  the  intelligence  of  the  French  and  the 
dullness  of  the  English  pillars  of  society ;  the  solidity 
of  French  life  compared  with  French  politics,  the 
comparative  want  of  solidity  in  English  life.  The 
solid  English  middle-classes  had  not  enough  of  the 
French  firm  faith  in  life  not  to  be  honestly  scared  by 
the  bogey  of  socialism,  at  the  same  time  that  the 
bogey  failed  to  make  as  much  impression  on  the 
English  as  on  the  French  political  world. 

The  particular  contrast  between  the  relatively 
shifty  and  substantial  politics  of  France  and  England 
and  the  relative  shakiness  and  solidity  of  English  and 
French  life  suggests  broader  likenesses  and  differ- 
ences between  the  two  political  temperaments.  The 
two  great  points  of  political  kinship  between  the  two 
peoples  is  their  common  political  genius  and  their 
common  love  of  liberty ;  both  must  put  the  two  at 
the  head  of  modern  nations.  No  two  others,  except 
perhaps  the  small  and  wonderful  Swiss  patchwork, 
have  freedom  as  much  in  the  blood,  or  the  same 
natural  bent  for  social  building.  This  kinship  is 
perhaps  more  talked  about  in  international  speeches 
than  really  thought  about.  It  takes  the  Frenchman 
and  the  Englishman  some  time,  travelling,  and 
reflection  to  understand  the  one  how  free,  in  spite 
of  her  rigid  forms,  and  constructive,  in  spite  of  her 
muddling,  England  is,  and  the  other  that  in  spite 
of  her  accepted  bureaucracy  the  "  liberty  "  written  in 

79 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

the  Republican  motto  of  France  is  a  real  thing,  and 
that  although  she  talks  so  much  about  social  build- 
ings she  does  build.  The  superficial  observer  of 
politics  in  England  sees  discipline,  in  France  hears 
words  ;  he  next  observes  English  muddle  and  French 
autocrac^^  All  these  impressions  reflect  parts  of  the 
truth.  Seen  in  proper  perspective,  neither  English 
discipline,  nor  English  rule  of  thumb  ;  neither  French 
political  changeableness,  nor  French  stiff-necked 
officialism ;  neither  the  Lord  INIayor's  Sword  Bearer, 
the  Cap  of  Maintenance,  Rouge  Dragon  and  Port- 
cullis Pursuivant,  nor  the  Territorials,  Education 
Bills,  Licensing  Laws  ;  neither  house-of-card  Cabinets, 
self-contradictory  Parliamentary  parties,  Anarchist 
Royalists,  conservative  socialists,  nor  despotic  prefects, 
martinet  tax-collectors.  Imperialist  centralisation, 
absolutist  disestablishment,  can  prevent  England  and 
France  from  being  the  two  most  free  and  constructive 
nations  in  the  world. 

English  freedom  and  French  freedom  are  the 
types  of  modern  political  liberties ;  the  two  peoples 
have  different  ways  of  being  free.  The  peculiar 
talent  of  the  English  is  to  combine  individualism 
and  discipline ;  it  is  one  the  French  have  not.  The 
Englishman,  stubbornly  jealous  of  his  own  rights  and 
bias,  is  capable  of  working  well  with  others  to  a 
common  end,  if  he  see  the  end  clearly  and  judge  it 
worth  his  while  and  imattainable  by  himself  alone. 
No  man  is  [more  pig-headedly  individualistic,  none 

80 


POLITICS 

can  pull  better  together  with  others  when  it  suits 
him ;  none  is  more  self-centred  in  his  own  little  life, 
yet  none  has  made  a  like  success  of  club-life.  He 
will  go  his  own  gait  like  a  bull  in  a  china  shop 
if  he  chooses  ;  if  he  chooses  to  tramp  in  company 
he  will  fall  in  with  the  step.  When  he  has  made 
up  his  mind  the  game  is  worth  playing  he  keeps 
to  the  rules,  in  cricket,  on  committees,  and  in 
party  politics ;  but  he  will  obey  rules  only  of  his 
own  free  will,  he  must  first  of  all  choose  what  rules 
he  will  obey,  then  he  will  obey  them.  Of  course  it 
is  usually  not  his  free  will,  it  is  his  blood,  his  up- 
bringing, and  his  surroundings  that  choose  for  him, 
but  he  thinks  himself  a  free  agent  and  obeys  there- 
fore without  a  qualm. 

This  social  and  political  discipline  in  individualism 
is  quite  un-French.  The  French  mind  has  a  diffi- 
culty in  being  free  between  blinkers ;  if  it  wants  to 
see  it  cannot  bring  itself  to  put  them  on,  and  when 
it  puts  them  on  it  shuts  its  eyes  altogether.  It  has 
not  the  English  talent  for  accepting  rules  and  being 
lawless  within  those  rules.  If  it  is  a  free  mind  it  has 
no  sooner  given  itself  rules  than  it  questions  them  ; 
English  discipline  consists  in  believing  that  bad  rules 
are  better  than  none,  and  English  independence  can 
keep  upright  within  fixed  lines,  well  or  ill-drawn, 
once  accepted.  The  French  mind,  if  it  thinks  at 
all,  thinks  first  about  the  fixed  lines  and  must  move 
them ;    it  cannot  keep  itself  from  altering  the  rules 

81  G 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

during  the  game.     Why  play  by  the  rule  when  it 
is  a  stupid  rule  ?     Because  it  is  the  rule,  never  is 
the  French  answer.     Hence,  the  passion  for  reform 
in  the  forms  of  government.     We  are  in  the  habit 
of  laughing  at  the  French  because  they  are  always 
pasting  new  labels  on  old  goods  ;  they  might  retort, 
that  we  carefully  keep  cracked  galhpots  to  put  new 
jam  into  when  we  happen  to  have  made  new  jam. 
They  change  the  names  of  things  because  they  rightly 
feel  that  a  new  thing  under  an  old  name  is  not  really 
new  ;  the  substance  of  some  things  cannot  change, 
a  new  name  then  is  some  approach  to  a  new  form. 
It  may  and  it  does  happen  that  the  French  do  not 
succeed  in  changing  more  than  a  name  because  the 
inertia  of  the  thing  is  too  strong  for  them.     In  those 
cases  we  do  not  think  of  even  changing  the  name. 
The  French  never  think  of  beginning  with  the  thing 
and   letting  the   name   change  itself      When  they 
reform  only  forms,  their  failure  is  due,  not  to  half- 
heartedness,   but   on   the   contrary  to  absoluteness : 
they  must  have  the  whole  change  at  once,  and  rush 
at  once  to  the  finished  form  of  the  new  thing,  in- 
cluding new  words,  new  names,  new  symbols.     They 
change  forms  first  because  they  want,  not  because 
they  don't  want,  essential  changes.     The  fixed  forms 
to  which  the  English  mind  clings  are  the  rules  which 
it  sets  itself  for  the  game  and  within,  but  only  within, 
which   it   plays   freely.      If  the  French  mind   give 
itself  such  rules  it  cannot  play  freely.     When  it  does 

82 


POLITICS 

give  itself  rules  it  is  the  most  rigidly  regulated  mind 
in  the  world.  French  political  conservatism  is  the 
narrowest  of  the  modern  world  and  French  social 
conservatism  the  most  rigorous  ;  what  the  French 
royalist,  imperialist  (the  remnant  left  of  it),  clericalist 
and  nationalist  parties  aim  at  is  by  main  force  to  set 
up  a  complete  despotism,  and  really  conservative 
French  families  would  be  scared  by  the  Bohemianism 
of  the  British  middle-classes. 

Because  the  French  mind  does  not  take  kindly  to 
discipline  in  freedom  it  is  not  good  at  co-operation. 
We  are,  individualists  though  we  be.  The  French 
do  not  pull  well  together,  but  pull  at  sixes  and  sevens 
if  there  is  any  pull  in  them  at  all.  A  common 
practical  purpose  will  marshal  us  into  an  orderly 
political  army,  they  will  not  fall  to  for  so  little. 
Such  a  purpose  must  always  be  only  a  makeshift, 
and  some  among  them  will  pick  holes  in  it  at  once. 
The  give  and  take  of  political  and  social  co-operation 
is  repugnant  to  them.  Their  purpose,  if  for  its  sake 
they  are  to  sink  differences  and  club  together,  must 
be  something  further  away — a  cause,  a  hero.  A 
high  cause  satisfies  longings  and  swamps  independent 
motives.  A  man  with  the  heroic  quality  is  worth 
working  shoulder  to  shoulder  for,  and  the  sheer  heroic 
in  him  becomes  by  itself  the  high  cause.  We  are 
little  given  to  hero-worship.  When  our  heroes  are 
dead  we  are  sentimental  over  them  ;  we  care  more  for 
what  they  do  than  for  the  men  themselves.      The 

83 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

French  can  be  great  hero-worshippers,  as  they  can 
also  be  ferocious  iconoclasts,  which  comes  much  to 
the  same  thing.      It  is  in  this  sense  that  they  are 
ideaUsts,  they  who  are  constantly  calUng  themselves 
so,  though  in  every  other  the  strongest  realists  in  the 
world.     About  us  the  most  realistic  thing  probably 
is  on  the  contrary  our  pohtics,  and  in  the  political 
world  a  mark  of  our  reahsm  is  our  small  zeal  for 
hero-worship.      In   this   way   our   lack   of    political 
imagination  has  sometimes  served  instead  of  harming 
us :    we  have  had   no   Napoleon   but  we   have  had 
no  General  Boulanger  either.     "  Boulangism  "   will 
remain  as   the   perfect   example   of  the  worst   trap 
political   enthusiasm   can   lay   for  the   French.      It 
never   could   have   caught   us  ;    on   the  other   hand 
even  to   fall   into  a  trap  requires  imagination.      It 
will  always  be  a  problem  whether  it  is  worse  for  a 
people  to  have  worshipped  a  sham  hero  than  to  have 
worshipped  no  hero  at  all. 

The  most  obvious  difference  between  the  French 
and  English  political  temperaments  is  between  the 
theorism  of  the  former  and  the  opportunism  of  the 
latter,  between  French  general  ideas  and  English 
rule-of- thumb.  The  strongest  link  between  the  two 
is  that  both  have  built  more  effectually  and  more 
richly  than  any  other  modern  political  minds,  the 
former  practically  in  spite  of  its  theorism,  the  latter 
harmoniously ^in  spite  of  its  shortsiglitedness.  Another 
link   is   the   self-contradictoriness   of    both   political 

84 


POLITICS 

spirits.  Perhaps  because  we  are  the  two  most 
intelHgent  poHtical  nations,  we  are  the  two  most 
inconsistent.  The  persistency  of  the  firm  French 
earth  beneath  wild  political  overgrowths  has  been 
shown  before ;  it  is  almost  as  remarkable  to  see  the 
solid  English  soil  suddenly  shifting  here  and  there 
beneath  the  carefully  laid  out  garden  of  English 
politics.  Flights  of  political  fancy  leave  French  life 
solider  than  before  ;  in  the  midst  of  the  imperturbably 
steady  game  of  English  politics  the  English  public 
mind,  which  seemed  to  have  no  imagination,  is 
abruptly  carried  laway  by  impulses  and  scares.  Per- 
haps the  fact  is  that  its  faith  in  life  is  not  as  firm  as 
it  looked.  Our  steady  political  game  is  what  keeps 
us  going  steadily ;  when  we  have  only  our  faith  in 
life  to  fall  back  upon  we  are  shaky.  The  French 
faith  in  life  is  the  solidest  thing  the  French  have,  and 
they  are  never  on  firmer  ground  than  when  they  have 
only  that  to  fall  back  upon.  Yet  we  also  do  believe 
in  life  ;  perhaps,  the  truth  then  is  that  the  French 
have  reasoned  out  a  faith  in  life  and  we  have  not. 
When  that  faith  is  all  the  support  left  us  we  find 
only  an  instinct  to  stand  on ;  the  French  find  an 
instinct  upon  which  they  have  already  built  a  philo- 
sophy. Faith  in  life  is  a  stronger  mainstay  for  the 
French  than  for  us,  because  they  have  thought  more 
about  life  than  we,  who  have  mostly  felt  about  it. 

The  history  of  the  Third  Republic  continuously 
shows   the   variations   of   French    politics   and    the 

85 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

steadfastness  of  French  life.  No  other  country  has 
come  out  of  such  crises  so  unscathed.  '*  Boulangism  " 
drew  to  itself  every  politician  venturesomely  on  the 
make  and  many  green  hero-worshippers ;  it  came 
nearer  than  most  people  remember  now  to  setting 
up  a  plunder  rule  by  a  ready  gang  :  the  poor  hero's 
dismay,  a  quick  trick  of  political  high-handedness, 
and  Boulangism  was  killed,  the  Third  Republic 
coming  out  of  it  stronger.  The  Dreyfus  case  tore  the 
nation  in  two  :  one  side  tried  the  Boulangist  game 
again  (it  was  the  same  gang  with  a  bigger  and 
greener  backing)  and  as  nearly  succeeded ;  the  other 
side  just  for  the  sake  of  the  cause  (was  there  ever  a 
cause  that  plucked  up  so  many  properly  growing 
roots  ?)  was  ready  to  call  for  the  great  social  upheaval. 
The  case  was  settled,  the  one  side  was  beaten,  once 
more,  the  other  dropped  the  social  revolution  like  a 
hot  coal :  the  State  had  been  strengthened  by  the 
defeat  of  the  party  led  by  adventurers,  and  had  not 
been  weakened  by  the  rashness  with  which  the 
substantial  party  of  liberty  had  let  itself  in  for  a  good 
deal  more  social  liberty  than  it  had  bargained  for. 
The  *'  bloc  "  rose  out  of  the  Dreyfus  case  to  power. 
The  Church  Party  had  reached  its  highest  point  of 
power  under  the  Third  Republic  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Dreyfus  case.  The  bloc  smashed  the  Church 
Party  for  the  time  being,  started  the  sharpest  change 
any  great  State  has  known  in  the  last  thirty  years, 
and  in  less  than  a  tenth  of  the  time  England  spent 

86 


POLITICS 

talking  about  Irish  Home  Rule,  French  Disestablish- 
ment became  a  finished,  accepted,  almost  conservative 
fact.     Simultaneously,  hand   labour  was   grumbling 
more  loudly  at  its  lot,  the  Parliamentary  Socialist  Party 
formed,  Trade-Unions  at  last  became  legal,  the  Par- 
liamentary Socialist  Party  came  to  effectual,  almost 
official,  power  with  the  bloc,  labour  yet  more  loudly 
grumbled,  the  C.  G.  T.  (General  Labour  Federation) 
succeeded  in  becoming  the  mouthpiece  for  its  gruffest 
growls,  the  Socialist  Party  "  unified  "  itself  away  from 
"  bourgeois "  Power,  and  failed  to  unify  itself  into 
Trade-Unionism's  good  graces,  and  the  great  social 
crash  was  a  dead  certainty  two  or  three  times  a  year. 
Boulangism,  militant  clericalism  and  its  consequence 
political   anti-clericalism,   anti-Dreyfusist   patriotism 
on  the  make,  "  bourgeois  "  Dreyfusism  turning  revolu- 
tionist for  the  sake  of  Dreyfus,  the  blood  and  thunder 
of  the  C.  G.  T.,  reactionism  crying  wolf  every  five 
minutes  :  that  is  the  froth  on  the  top.     The  country, 
after  the  discreet   stroke   of  despotism   that   killed 
Boulangism,  returning  not   only   to   quietness,   but 
also  to  no  less  liberty  ;  the  anti-Dreyfusists  quashed, 
the  Dreyfusists    sobered ;    the    Church,  firmly  and 
peacefully  disestablished  by  the  State,  as  solidly  and 
quietly  re-established   in   the   wealthy   classes ;    the 
Socialist  Party  producing  weighty  statesmen,  soon 
known  as  Conservatives :   these  are  the  still  waters 
beneath,  which  the  froth  pretends  not  to  see,  and  by 
its   own   pretence  proves  to  exist,   labour   pointing 

87 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

proudly  to  its  better  organisation  as  to  the  sign  of  its 
fierce  anarchism,  and  reaction  shouting  that  the 
country  has  gone  to  the  dogs  because  it  persists  in 
hving  quietly  under  the  Republic.  It  is  the  French 
faith  in  hfe  that  has  always  kept  France  firm.  It 
can  be  torn  no  more  from  French  anarchists  than 
from  French  bourgeois,  no  more  from  French  poets 
than  from  the  pillars  of  French  society.  Whatever 
he  may  scheme  or  wreck  or  dream,  the  Frenchman 
remembers  always  the  exceedingly  true  thing  that 
the  first  of  all  human  causes  is  living.  Much  in  the 
conduct  of  our  affairs  might  be  explained  by  our 
forgetting  to  posit  life  as  the  fact  to  start  from. 

The  contemporary  history  of  the  political  State 
relations  between  England  and  France  has  been  a 
history  of  impulses  on  one  side,  and  of  deliberation 
on  the  other.  The  chief  reason  why  the  Frencli  have 
been  much  more  careful  in  their  doings  with  us  than 
we  in  ours  with  them  is  that  they  are  ill-informed  on 
foreign  affairs,  and  leave  them  to  speciahsts.  Even 
politicians  are  not  sure  enough  of  themselves  in  the 
subject  to  play  with  it.  Thus,  and  by  the  traditional 
practice  of  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  much  more  oracular 
and  Sibylline  than  the  English  Foreign  Office,  foreign 
affairs  are  put  in  a  pigeon-hole  of  their  own,  away 
from  the  litter  of  other  political  affairs  which  poli- 
ticians toss  up  and  bang  about  pleasantly,  as  the 
delicious  Under-Secretary  of  State  for  Fine  Arts  in 
the  "  Bois  sacrd "  banged  about  the  dossiers  on  his 

88 


POLITICS 

table  whenever  any  one  called,  to  show  how  busy  he 
was.  In  foreign  policy  French  political  fancy  is  shy 
of  indulging  itself,  and  French  solidity  accordingly 
rules.  Almost  the  contrary  happens  with  us.  We 
cannot  apply  the  set  rules  of  our  own  deliberate 
political  game  to  the  international  sport  of  foreign 
affairs  ;  our  own  congenital  method  failing  us,  we  are 
alternately  blind  or  wild-eyed.  In  politics  the  French 
are  more  level-headed  abroad  than  at  home,  and  we 
are  the  opposite,  because  abroad  the  flourishes  of 
French  character  cease  and  its  substantial  nature  pre- 
vails, and  because  abroad  our  political  conventions 
lapse  and  our  character  has  to  throw  itself  upon  the 
mercy  of  imthought-out  impulses.  We  also  have 
specialists  in  foreign  affairs,  but  we  interfere  more 
with  them  than  the  French  with  theirs ;  and  our 
intervention  is  always  emotional,  whereas  there  is 
little  real  emotion  in  our  home  politics.  French 
political  excitability,  on  the  contrary,  is  almost 
wholly  confined  to  home  politics. 

French  public  opinion  has  rarely  gushed  or  ranted 
over  foreign  affairs  since  the  Third  Republic,  and  even 
when  it  did  lose  its  head,  it  lost  it  consistently.  The 
excitements  stirred  up  among  us  in  the  correspond- 
ing period  by  foreign  policy  questions  have  been 
generally  incoherent  and  contradictory.  In  the 
Franco-Russian  honeymoon  the  bride  certainly  did 
gush,  and  would  have  been  scolded  by  those  French 
mothers  who  hold  it  improper  in  a  wife  to  be  in  love 

89 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

with  her  husband  "just  as  if  she  were  his  mistress" ; 
but  in  spite  of  the  one-sided  spooning,  it  really  was  a 
perfect  "  marriage  of  reason."  The  women  who  held 
their  babies  up  to  be  kissed  by  Admiral  Avellan's 
sailors  in  the  streets  of  Paris  were  acting  most  politi- 
cally. The  only  possible  European  policy  at  that 
time  for  the  Republic  was  that  of  the  Franco-Rus- 
sian Alliance.  The  French  poured  their  money  out, 
but  the  alliance  was  worth,  if  not  quite  such  a  price, 
at  least  a  big  one.  From  the  Franco-Russian  Alli- 
ance to  the  Entente  Cordiale,  our  policy  towards 
Russia  was  as  changeable  as  an  April  day — northerly 
gales  and  beaming  sunshine  alternating  every  five 
minutes.  How  can  Europe  know  where  she  is  with 
us  ?  The  remarkable  thing  is  that  not  a  few,  but 
all  of  us,  change.  Anti-Tsarist  tories,  pro-Tsarist 
liberals,  the  Conservative  more  revolutionist  for 
Russia  than  the  Radical  English  press,  and  the  Con- 
servative English  journalist's  articles  filed  by  Russian 
revolutionists  as  the  truest  record  of  the  revolt  of  the 
Russian  people ;  a  year  or  two  later  English  Conser- 
vatives all  smiles  for  the  Russian  autocracy,  as  if 
nothing  had  happened,  and  suppressing  all  reports  of 
Russian  revolutionism ;  a  few  months  after  that 
English  Liberals  all  smiles  for  the  enlightened  free- 
dom of  the  Prussian  Government,  and  English  Con- 
servatives ready,  if  pressed,  to  call  the  Russian  Empire 
freer  than  the  Cierman.  What  weathercocks  we  are  I 
Every  time  public   opinion   apparently  takes   every 

90 


POLITICS 

change  to  be  final,  and  forgets  all  about  its  excite- 
ment of  the  year  or  the  week  before.  We  are  all 
against  the  Turk,  then  all  against  the  Russian,  all 
for  the  German  and  against  the  French,  then  all  for 
the  Frenchman  and  against  the  German,  all  for  the 
Jap,  then  all  for  the  Russian,  with  a  six  months' 
interlude  of  being  all  against  the  Austrian.  What 
new  moods  the  Turk's  downfall  will  eventually  move 
us  to  is  a  pretty  problem  in  national  psychology  for 
the  future.  In  the  same  time,  French  foreign  policy 
hardly  changed  at  all ;  it  changed  only  once,  and 
then  turned  slowly  round  with  careful  deliberation. 
France  was  naturally  not  best  pleased  when  Russia 
plunged  into  the  fatal  Far-East  Imperialist  policy 
and  the  war  with  Japan,  but  she  stuck  to  the  alli- 
ance. She  could  not  help  herself,  it  is  true,  but  her 
Government  was  always  careful  not  to  spoil  its  faith- 
fulness by  any  betrayal  of  ill-grace.  Towards  Ger- 
many she  has  remained  the  same  since  the  war  of 
1870,  never  altogether  forgetting,  never  altogether 
burying  the  hatchet.  During  her  coolness  with 
England  her  Government,  under  Jules  Ferry,  had 
shadowy  visions  of  a  German  entente  some  day,  but 
the  country  would  never  have  accepted  it  then,  and 
would  still  less  accept  it  now.  The  booting  out  of 
M.  Delcass^  has  been  the  only  case  of  real  scare  in 
France  under  the  Third  Republic,  compared  with 
which  the  Schnaebele  incident  was  insignificant. 
Nobody  pretends  it  was  not  a  bad  case  of  funk  ;  but 

91 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

less  than  three-and-a-half  years  later  France  retrieved 
herself  by  speaking  to  the  German  Empire  as  no 
other  Power  has  spoken  to  it  since  its  foundation. 
Her  doing  so  was  no  mere  accidental  burst  of  pluck ; 
she  had  carefully  wrought  herself  in  those  years  to 
the  pitch  of  being  able  to  do  so.  The  understanding 
with  Italy  was  no  sudden  move  of  M.  Delcasse,  and 
it  has  not  changed  since  it  was  formed.  With 
Austria  the  French  Republic  has  always  been  on 
politely  friendly  terms,  having  always  had  a  thought 
— not  far  wrong,  perhaps — at  the  back  of  her  head 
that  Sadowa  and  Sedan  made  a  link  that  might  some 
day  be  useful,  and  during  the  Bosnia- Herzegovina 
annexation  crisis  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  not  caring  tup- 
pence about  the  Berlin  Treaty,  was  all  the  time 
making  discreet  signs  to  the  Ball-Platz  not  to  mind 
our  excitement — "  They  don't  mean  anything.  Just 
humour  them.  They're  a  good  sort.  It  will  all 
blow  over  " — while  we  were  dancing  in  eager  zest  in 
our  emotion  over  the  Southern  Slavs,  until  we  found 
we  danced  all  alone.  As  for  relations  with  us,  it  is 
France  throughout  who  has  kept  a  cool  head,  and  we 
who  have  ranted  or  gushed.  AVho  in  England  now 
remembers  the  wild  Fashoda  fuss  ?  We  certainly 
did  not  present  the  spectacle  of  an  even-tempered 
nation  ;  the  French  measured  the  risk  carefully,  found 
it  not  worth  running,  and  gave  in.  It  is  difficult 
.now  to  conceive  that  we  were  ready  for  so  insane 
an  act  as  war   with  France  over  Fashoda.     A  few 

92 


POLITICS 

years  later  we  were  throwing  ourselves  at  the  head  of 
France.  I  have  once  or  twice  told  the  story  of  King 
Edward's  amazing  move,  when  he  went  to  Paris  with 
the  entente  cordiale  in  his  pocket,  which  the  French 
had  never  dreamt  of  asking  him  to  bring,  and  which 
they  looked  all  over  before  taking  it.  Everything 
French  suddenly  became  perfect  in  England.  Dur- 
ing the  Boer  War  and  the  Paris  Exhibition  of  1900, 
which  we  well-nigh  boycotted,  we  had  talked  of  frog- 
eaters  and  French  vices.  The  French  spent  two 
years  or  so  wondering  whether  they  would  take  our 
proffered  hand,  after  having  called  us  all  the  names 
they  could  think  of  during  the  Boer  War.  No 
matter,  we  went  on  pretending  they  were  wringing 
it  warmly  all  the  time,  and  when  they  did  at  last 
honestly  take  it,  we  had  exhausted  all  our  protesta- 
tions of  friendship.  When  we  remember  Fashoda 
and  the  beginning  of  the  entente  cordiale,  can  we 
really  still  call  the  French  mercurial  and  ourselves 
steady-going  ? 

Yet  we  still  often  do  when  we  compare  ourselves 
with  them.  We  do  not  call  ourselves  steady  when 
we  look  only  at  our  own  Foreign  Office.  On  the 
other  hand,  belief  in  the  lynx-eyed  Machiavellism  of 
our  Foreign  Office  is  a  favourite  French  superstition. 
This  is  of  a  piece  with  the  two  nations'  misunder- 
standings of  each  other  in  political  and  other  matters. 
We  do  not  make  the  exactly  converse  mistake,  and 
call  the  French  flighty  in  their  foreign  policy ;  but 

U3 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

we  do  call  them  mercurial  in  their  home  affairs.  In 
observing  our  home  affairs,  the  French  ingenuously 
marvel  at  our  solidity,  look  with  awe  at  the  House  of 
Lords,  and  cry  out  in  friendly  pain  when  we  touch 
that  bulwark  of  blood,  race  and  culture,  spoilt  by  no 
money  or  unseasoned  shoddiness.  We  marvel  with 
the  same  simplicity  at  French  upheavals,  strikes, 
plots,  "  open  rebellion,"  the  "  onrush  of  revolution- 
ism," and  every  time  fear  that  this  time  France  really 
is  going  to  the  dogs. 

Our  political  solidity  and  want  of  imagination  are 
real ;  French  political  imaginativeness  and  variability 
are  real ;  but,  while  the  more  obvious,  both  are  the 
less  interesting  characteristics  of  the  two  peoples.  If 
they  understood  each  other  better,  what  would 
interest  us  most  in  French  pohtics,  as  in  French 
life,  would  be  to  observe  the  solidity  beneath  the 
mobihty ;  and  what  would  interest  the  French  most 
in  our  politics,  as  in  our  life,  would  be  to  watch  the 
jumps  we  make  in  the  midst  of  our  steadiness. 


94 


POLITICIANS 


VI 

POLITICIANS 

I.  Types 

The  greatest  and  commonest  fallacy  committed  in 
parallels  between  English  and  French  politicians  is 
the  comparison  drawn  between  the  amateurism  of 
the  former  and  the  professionalism  of  the  latter.  It 
would  be  truer  to  reverse  the  terms  of  the  com- 
parison. The  professionals  are  the  English  poUticians, 
the  French  are  the  amateurs.  Not  only  are  the 
former  professionals,  but  the  profession  among  them 
is  hereditary.  Among  the  latter  the  political  gift  or 
taint  is  very  seldom  handed  down  and  not  more  than 
two  or  three  political  families  are  known  to  keep  in 
the  same  line  of  business  from  father  to  son.  Pay- 
ment of  members  is  not  a  chief  point.  Members 
may  be  paid  £400  or  £600  a  year  to  sit  in  Parliament, 
but  unpaid  members  were  paid  much  more  long  be- 
fore they  began  to  sit.  What  matters  more  is  the 
existence  of  a  political  caste,  as  in  England  and  not 
in  France.  A  certain  type  of  Englishman  for  two 
centuries  has  thought  of  Parliament  as  his  natural 
place  by  the  time  he  was  twenty-five   or   so  ;    the 

97  H 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

French  have  not  this  equivalent.  He  considers 
ParHament  so  much  to  be  his  own  province  that  he 
naively  calls  intruders,  upstarts  and  men  from  no- 
where the  increasing  number  of  his  rivals  who  are 
outside  his  caste  because  their  fathers  did  not  sit  in 
the  House  before  them.  The  only  French  counter- 
part of  the  English  political  caste  might  be  found 
in  the  French  hereditary  Government  clerk  class. 
"  Keepers  of  mortgages  "  from  father  to  son  are  con- 
ceivable, and  do  exist  through  generations,  and  it  is 
not  only  plausible  that  the  Deputy  sub- Chief  of  a 
Department  in  the  office  of  Stamps,  Registration  and 
Domains  should,  but  very  likely  that  he  will,  bring 
his  boy  up  to  be  Deputy  sub-Chief  at  his  age.  The 
differences  are  that  the  Government  clerk  caste  is 
not  paid  enough  to  live  upon  without  the  help  of  its 
wives'  dowers,  whereas  the  political  caste  can  afford  not 
to  be  paid  at  all,  and  that  the  French  "  Administra- 
tion "  is  not  a  political  caste,  but  hates,  though  fear- 
ing, politicians,  and  has  in  the  blood  a  dislike  of  the 
public  spirit  and  of  the  pubhc  voice,  however  ex- 
pressed. 

The  French  politician  belongs  to  no  caste ;  he 
jumps  into  politics  from  anywhere.  The  type  of 
public  man  in  which  we  liave  gloried  for  centuries 
is  therefore  not  to  be  found  across  the  channel,  nor 
perhaps  anywhere  but  in  (ircat  Britain.  He  is  solely 
an  English  or  Scotch  type.  We  are,  of  course,  ex- 
ceedingly proud  of  him,  and  we  need  not  indeed  be 

98 


POLITICIANS 

ashamed  of  him.  British  pubHc  spirit  is  one  of  the 
famihar  English  or  Scotch  gods  among  which  we 
have  all  been  brought  up.  Going  abroad  we  some- 
times like  it  even  better  than  we  did  at  home,  and  the 
typical  man  of  the  British  political  caste  which  claims 
no  other  raison  d'etre  does  not  become  unsympathetic 
seen  from  afar.  He  rather  gains  in  our  affection  and 
becomes  almost  lovable ;  but  he  does  not  gain  in  im- 
pressiveness.  We  love  him  but  we  look  up  to  him 
less ;  we  look  at  him  affectionately,  with  a  wild  sur- 
mise. He  almost  amazes  seen  from  abroad.  He 
looks  like  something  inhuman,  something  unearthly, 
he  is  not  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  type  like  the  men  of 
other  nations.  In  himself  he  is  of  course  an  amiable 
gentleman  ;  the  caste  he  stands  for  is  a  growth  hang- 
ing by  only  a  slender  twig  to  mankind.  As  its  repre- 
sentative he  is  not  a  man,  but  a  frame  of  muid 
transmitted  by  heredity.  He  does  not  approach 
human  things  humanly,  when  acting  representatively, 
but  as  a  formula  going  out  to  meet  facts.  A  very 
excellent  formula  he  often  is  and  one  that  has  often 
served,  and  still  serves  usefully ;  not  a  formula 
deduced  from  a  theory  like  the  neat  words,  not  the 
hot  passion,  of  the  French  Revolution,  but  one  picked 
up  dimly  through  generations  from  life,  one  therefore 
that  can  be  applied  to  some  kinds  of  that  life  from 
whose  past  it  was  gathered.  He  is  indeed  no  theory, 
British  public  spirit  is  "  nothing  if  not  practical,"  but 
the  practice  is  very  strange.     The  practician  does  not 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

look  at  political  life  as  if  it  were  real  life.  The 
hallowed  British  public  habit  of  "  muddling  through  " 
does  not  come  from  political  realism  ;  the  deed  is 
realist  because  it  has  to  be,  the  thought  was  a  dream. 
The  British  poUtician  lives  in  a  dream,  or  in  the 
midst  of  a  game. 

The  most  remarkable  spectacle  presented  by  poli- 
tical England  to  other  countries  is  the  steady  going 
on  of  the  game,  be  human  things  what  they  will.  If 
they  fit  in  with  the  game  the  accident  is  a  lucky  one ; 
if  they  don't,  so  much  the  worse  for  humanity,  not 
for  the  game,  and  the  game  goes  on  interestingly. 
This  is  not  the  same  thing  as  French  pohtical 
theorism ;  its  causes  are  almost  contrary,  it  some- 
times leads  to  much  the  same  consequences.  The 
English  political  game  started  from  some  actual 
aspects  of  English  life,  never  from  any  thinking  about 
life,  even  English  life  ;  French  political  theorism  grew 
solely  from  schemes  of  life  which  enjoyed  ignoring 
life  for  the  purpose  of  reasoning  about  it.  When  the 
former  happens  to  suit  the  human  things  it  plays 
with,  it  suits  them  well,  perhaps  even  better  than  the 
latter  ever  can,  and  a  political  theorist  who  theorises 
wrong  is  highly  unsafe  ;  but  when  the  political  game 
is  out  of  touch  with  reality  it  is  an  emptier  perform- 
ance than  wrong  political  theorism.  Because  the 
political  game  is  played  in  Great  Britain  by  the 
same  caste  from  fatlier  to  son  (and  we  love  the 
caste  because   it   does   play  the  game)  we  can   call 

100 


POLITICIANS 

the   British   politician  the   professional  politician  of 
Europe. 

The  French  is  the  amateur  because  whether  his 
politics  be  a  game  or  a  business  he  dribbles  or  pitch- 
forks himself  into  it.  The  Enghsh  political  caste 
dabbling  in  politics  in  the  intervals  of  golf  is  the  pro- 
fessional political  caste  with  professional  traditions,  pro- 
fessional etiquette,  professional  esprit  de  corps  and  bent 
of  mind  and  a  professional  equation.  The  French  poli- 
tical world  has  no  such  unity  and  coherency.  Its 
variety  and  confusion  are  proofs  of  its  amateurism. 
The  bulk  of  English  political  men  belong  to  the 
political  caste,  even  Fourth  Parties  and  "  caves " 
belonged  to  it,  and  the  genuine  irregular  sharpshooter 
on  either  side  is  rare.  The  French  political  caste 
is  a  very  small  one,  with  a  precarious  existence 
and  almost  no  heredity :  one  can  remember  few 
instances  in  contemporary  times  of  political  influence 
handed  down  from  father  to  son.  The  French  poli- 
tical world  is  renewed  from  day  to  day  ;  it  is  the 
"administrative"  world  that  remains  imperturbably 
the  same  through  crises  and  revolutions.  The  French 
politician,  of  later  years  at  least,  has  sprung  up  like 
jack-in-the-box  and  gone  down  like  a  pricked  bladder. 
He  jumped  up  from  anywhere :  he  may  be  a  "  gentle- 
man," a  barber,  a  barman,  an  engine-driver,  a  million- 
aire, a  mine-owner,  a  Doctor  of  Medicine,  a  Doctor 
of  Philosophy,  a  Doctor  of  Law.  He  leapt  into  the 
political  world  without  any  family  traditions  for  a 

101 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

spring  board.  He  came  into  it  often  by  accident, 
usually  because  in  some  small  but  widening  circle  he 
was  the  man  with  the  gift  of  the  gab  and  the  master- 
ful manner.  He  comes  new  to  the  job  ;  it  brings 
him  in,  barring  postages,  drinks  to  constituents  and  a 
flat  in  town,  £600  a  year,  but  at  least  it  finds  him 
fresh.  He  does  not  step  wearily  into  a  game  which 
his  father  played  conscientiously  before  him.  He  is 
paid,  he  is  raw  and  he  doesn't  know  the  rules,  but  he 
is  fresh. 

The  variety,  that  is  to  say,  the  vitality,  of  the 
French  pohtical  world  is  its  quality ;  the  quality  of 
the  English  political  world  is  its  saneness.  At  its 
worst  the  former  is  irresponsible ;  the  latter  at  its 
worst  is  dead.  At  their  best,  the  one  is  full  of  ideas 
and  the  other  has  a  steady  nerve.  Both  are  in 
opposition  to  the  life  around  them,  but  the  opposition 
is  almost  exactly  reversed  in  the  two  cases.  French 
political  life  is  much  flightier  than  French  life ;  Eng- 
lish life  has  luckily  much  more  ideas  than  English 
political  life.  In  England  the  political  caste  is  the 
brake  upon  the  wheel,  in  France  the  French  people 
is  the  brake.  I  am  not  prepared  to  advance  that  the 
House  of  Commons  daily  holds  the  British  people 
back  from  making  revolutions,  or  to  deny  that  the 
French  people  has  made  revolutions.  But  it  is,  1 
think,  clear  that  tlie  British  people  is  comparatively 
more  impressionable  than  its  politicians,  and  the 
French  people  comparatively  more  levelheaded  than 

102 


POLITICIANS 

Its  politicians,  and  clearer  still  that  more  imagination 
is  to  be  found  in  the  English  people  than  in  English 
politicians,  and  a  firmer  grasp  of  the  facts  of  life 
amtng  the  French  people  than  among  French 
politicians. 

There  is  one  foremost  imposing,  satisfying,  beauti- 
ful type  of  English  politician.  There  are  several 
types  of  French  politicians  equally  in  the  running. 
They  iire  not  alike  and  one  would  not  put  them  as 
men  in  the  same  class.  The  English  politicians  are 
also  not  of  one  class,  but  there  is  a  class  of  them 
and  those  who  are  not  in  it  seem  outsiders.  None  of 
the  French  types  can  claim  to  be  the  standard,  and 
this  one  cannot  call  that  other  bad  form.  There  are 
several  sorts  of  good  form  and  bad  form  in  French 
politics,  mostly  bad  by  the  standard  of  the  English 
political  caste.  But  though  the  latter  be  shocked, 
bad  form  in  politics  is  not  all  loss.  The  mere  clash 
of  standards  and  types  is  often  useful,  and  there  is  a 
double  virtue  in  contradictory  conflicts.  In  England 
party  politics  may  be  incoherent  politics,  but  are 
generally  a  consistent  game,  and  few  political  types 
are  in  real  conflict.  In  France,  parties  and  types 
contradict  one  another  to  begin  with,  and  each  often 
contradicts  itself  into  the  bargain.  Dozens  of  ex- 
amples of  this  doubly  stimulating  quality  could  be 
given.  Royalist  and  clericalist  conservatives  in 
politics  who  are  revolutionists  in  everything  else, 
collect  pictures  at  which  conservative  artists  shudder, 

103 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

play  music  that  terrifies  the  schools,  profess  philo- 
sophic unbeliefs  which  subvert  academic  faiths  ani 
were  in  their  day  decadents  in  letters,  conservatives, 
in  short,  to  whom  it  has  never  occurred  that  social 
conservatism  might  more  fittingly  go  with  tradition- 
alism in  the  rest  of  human  thought,  are  as  common 
in  England  as  in  France,  and  the  political  ridical 
whose  religious  beliefs,  artistic  and  literary  taste  prove 
him  to  be  essentially  a  conservative  by  temperament 
is  peculiarly  English.  But  the  Roman  Catholic, 
church-going,  Republic  hating  royalist  who  gladly 
adopts  the  methods  of  anarchism  to  save  French 
society  from  republicanism,  the  "  nationahst "  whose 
patriotism  compels  him  to  believe  that  at  least  half 
his  countrymen  are  sold  traitors,  the  worshippers  of 
authority  who  flout,  because  it  is  called  a  republic, 
the  same  authority  that  they  would  adore  if  it  were 
called  a  monarchy,  these  are  if  not  exclusively  at  any 
rate  especially  French  types  ;  others  are  the  moderate 
republican  who  cries,  "  had  we  only  a  House  of 
Lords  ! "  and  has  fears  that  England  may  cease  to  be 
if  she  touch  hers,  the  socialist-radical  who  for  years 
has  been  the  pattern  of  conservatives  because  his 
policy  has  exactly  been  to  preserve  things  as  they 
are,  the  "  Unified  Socialist "  who  accepts  from  his 
party  a  yoke  whicli  he  would  call  a  hideous  despotism 
if  it  came  from  anywliere  else.  Bohemian  adven- 
turers standing  up  for  a  ruthlessly  strong  and  rigor- 
ously   ordered    society,    literary    anarchists    turned 

104 


POLITICIANS 

champions  of  the  ancient  traditions  of  the  soil,  Cohens 
and  Meyers  who  are  leaders  of  the  anti-Semites, 
millionaire  socialists  with  fastidious  tastes  and  beauti- 
ful motor-cars,  men  of  substance  and  pillars  of  the 
solid  middle  class  who  sing  the  "  Internationale  "  and 
"  Carmagnole  "  at  political  banquets,  pious  Catholics 
and  staunch  royalists  who  daily  pour  fouler  abuse  on 
each  other  than  they  ever  do  on  their  political 
opponents  :  all  these  make  for  variety  in  the  French 
political  world  and  keep  it  alive. 

II.  Words 

Political  oratory  is  different  in  the  two  countries. 
We  have  political  "  humour,"  the  French  have 
political  "  eloquence."  We  have  no  political  eloquence 
now  outside  newspaper  print.  Our  leader  writers 
change  their  convictions  every  few  years  or  weeks, 
but  continue  tub-thumping  in  the  same  good  old 
tradition  of  thick  and  sticky  rhetoric  flavoured  with 
lumps  of  stodgy  sarcasm.  French  political  humour 
bites  and  hurts,  but  it  exists  only  in  the  French 
political  press  ;  no  French  political  speaker  has  the 
least  streak  of  humour  in  him.  Political  oratory  in 
the  two  countries  may  be  classified  roughly  into  the 
"humorous,"  the  "spirited,"  the  "statesmanlike" 
for  England,  the  "  Parliamentary,"  the  "  eloquent," 
the  "  statesmanlike  "  for  France. 

The   "statesmanlike"   English   oratory  is   dying 

105 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

out,  apparently  because  no  great  voice  and  character 
remain  to  give  it  life.  Gladstone's  speeches  cannot  be 
read  with  patience  to-day.  The  mass  of  useless  words, 
however  they  may  have  sounded,  are  dead  in  print. 
The  mouthy  circumlocution  of  his  lessers  survives  in 
the  vital  statements  of  our  Cabinet  ministers,  who  are 
still  the  masters  of  Europe  in  ambiguity  whenever 
they  have  anything  of  European  importance  to  say. 
The  old  English  oratory  ought  to  have  been  killed  by 
that  eternal  meeting  of  the  Pickwick  Club.  The 
marvel  is  that  it  outlived  the  "  Pickwickian  sense," 
and  is  yet  not  quite  dead.  The  styles  that  have  come 
after  it  are  no  improvement.  The  spirited  or 
businesslike  is  always  getting  straight  to  the  point  in 
short  sentences,  "  rigidly  eschewing  "  any  flowers  or 
passion  which  would  be  out  of  place,  and  always 
sticking  plainly  to  business ;  the  business  and  the 
point  are  afterwards  surprised  to  find  that  they  have 
to  look  after  themselves.  The  humorous  modern 
oratory  has  unfortunately  not  yet  found  a  con- 
temporary Pickwick  Club.  The  brilliant  young 
spokesman  of  his  party  asks  what  its  opponents  want, 
and  having  paused  says  they  want  jobs  ;  he  calls  them 
a  job  lot ;  he  asks  if  his  hearers  will  stand  them  fur 
coats  and  champagne  and  motor  cars ;  he  thinks  they 
would  rather  pay  their  fares  to  Asia  Minor  (a  pause), 
to  .lericho.  (Hoars  of  huighter.)  He  thinks  alter- 
nately they  would  give  them  a  decoration,  the  great 
order  of  the  MacChuck.     The  speech  is  acclaimed  as 

106 


POLITICIANS 

one  of  the  most  biting,  caustic  and  funny  even  he  has 
ever  dehvered. 

French  pubUc  speaking  has  no  humour.  In  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  M.  Durand  du  Val  (de  Grasse), 
who  has  been  successively  Left,  Centre,  Opportunist, 
Radical  Republican,  Radical  and  Socialist-Radical, 
has  for  thirty  years  shown  equally  steady  zeal  and 
authoritative  competence  in  Committee  work.  Even 
the  following  bald  specimen  of  his  businesslike  style 
could  not  be  done  justice  to  in  a  translation. 

"  Messieurs, 

"Nous  vivons  sous  le  regime  de  I'incerti- 
tude  de  la  position  de  la  question.  Dans  le  but 
eclair^  et  patriotique  d'assurer  au  libre  jeu  de  nos 
institutions  parlementaires  un  essor  plus  large  et 
plus  fecond,  plus  d'amplitude  et  de  portee  et  plus 
de  potentiality  reahsatrice,  il  importe,  messieurs, 
d'apporter  davantage  de  lumieres  vivifiantes  et 
stabilisatrices  dans  le  sein  quelque  peu  confus  de  nos 
commissions  mixtes.  La  methode  qui  consiste,  si  je 
puis  ainsi  dire,  a  manquer  de  methode,  n'est  pas 
adequate  au  clair  genie  qui  devrait  presider  d'un  oeil 
impartial,  mais  plein  du  feu  d'un  zele  reformateur  et 
democrate,  au  cours  laborieux  de  nos  travaux.  Je  vous 
en  conjure,  messieurs,  elevons  nos  activites  patriotiques, 
mais  dispersees,  a  la  hauteur  des  reformes  regenera- 
trices,  pratiques  et  liberatrices  que  reclame  de  notre 
devoument  elu  ITime  solidarisee  et  laique  de  la  France." 

107 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Having   spoken  for   three   hours   and   a   quarter 
Chrysostomos  Bedoulle,  a  Unified  Socialist  by  pro- 
fession and  an  individualist  with  a  voice  by  tempera- 
ment, feels  that  he  has  presumed  too  much  upon  his 
strength  and  requests  an  adjournment  of  half  an  hour 
to  recuperate.     At  the  resumption :  "  Gentlemen,  I 
had   endeavoured  with,    alas,   only    too   unskilled   a 
brush,  but  with   an   enthusiasm  second   to  none  in 
sincerity,  to  paint   in   your   minds'   eye   some   faint 
sketch  of  that  dim  yet  vivid,  that  iniborn  yet  surely 
to  be  born  future  which  already  throbs  in  the  womb 
of  time,  that  future  which  we  may  not  but  which  our 
sons  will  see,  which  will   heal  the  wounds   of  this 
searing  day,  which  will  console  the  now  unconsolable, 
bring    estranged    hearts    together,   settle    upon   the 
disinherited   their  inheritance,  perhaps,  indeed,  visit 
retribution  upon  the  grasping  heirs  of  yesterday,  not, 
it  may  be,  without  some  just  severity,  for  to-morrow 
will  be  generous,  but  it  will  yet  be  a  day  of  anger  to 
the    unrighteous,    like     that     imaginary    day    once 
announced    in    splendid   words    by   a    childish    and 
discounted,  yet  not  wholly,  gentlemen,  even   to   us 
Socialists,  unsympathetic  legend.     I  had  feebly  tried 
to  paint  that  future.     I  will  not  return  to  it.     I  will 
not  dwell  with  my  all  too  weak  voice  again  upon  that 
picture.     I  will  not  endeavour  again  to  describe  its 
splendours.     I  will  not  again  i'ail  even  in  so  sublime 
a  cause.     I  will  not  again  soar  and  fall.     I  will  not 
again  attempt  to  grapple  with  the  great  to-be,  not 

108 


POLITICIANS 

again  throw  before  you  the  awful  vision — at  which 
even  as  my  inadequate  words  tried  to  draw  it  I  saw 
some  satisfied  egoisms  shudder — not  again  project, 
even  haltingly,  the  dread  foreboding  of  an  age  of 
goodness,  of  justice,  of  brotherhood.  No,  gentlemen, 
my  heart  swells  with  love  of  that  sublime  future, 
tears  tremble  on  my  eyelashes  when  my  yearning 
dreams  go  out  passionately  towards  it,  but  I  will 
force  myself  back  into  the  present,  into  this  tragic, 
this  cruel,  this  drab  present.  Yet  is  this  a  drab 
to-day  ?  Is  it  not  a  day  with  germs  of  a  glorious 
to-be,  with  the  foreshadowings  of  sumptuous  colours  ? 
And,  gentlemen,  this  France  of  ours,  has  she  not  her 
part  in  these  great  forebodings  ?  Is  hers  not  the 
greatest  part?  Is  it  not  from  her  womb  that  the 
sublime  to-morrow  may  be  brought  forth  into 
the  light  ?  Ah,  gentlemen,  do  not  claim  the 
monopoly  of  patriotism !  Do  not  call  us  inter- 
nationalists anti-patriots.  We  are  the  truest  sons  of 
France.  To-morrow  us  alone  she  will  not  disown. 
We  alone  believe  in  her,  we  the  Socialists.  We  look 
to  her  as  the  mother,  we  watch  her  womb,  we  will  be 
present  at  the  birth,  we  are  the  strong  accoucheurs, 
we  will  help  forth  greatness,  sublimity,  happiness. 
And  of  that  glorious  to-be,  which  it  is  we  who  will 
bring  into  the  world,  even  it  may  be,  and  if  need  be, 
with  the  forceps  of  social  revolution,  it  will  be  this 
France  of  ours  that  will  be  the  great,  the  tortured, 
the  ecstatic  mother."     (Applause  on  many  benches, 

109 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

notably  the  Extreme  Right,  the  exact  Centre  and  the 
Extreme  Left.  The  orator  is  specially  congratulated 
by  the  seventy-four  United  Socialists  who  all  shake 
hands  with  him.) 

The  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  has  caused  it  to 
be  announced  that  at  5.13  he  will  make  a  statement 
on  the  Timbuctoo  Waterworks.  At  5.12  M.  Dupont 
(de  la  INIoselle)  is  stopping  the  gap.  A  minute  later 
the  Minister  walks  up  to  the  tribune,  a  piece  of  paper 
in  hand.  "  Gentlemen,  the  honourable  M.  Dumont 
desired  to  interpellate  me  on  the  Timbuctoo  Water- 
works. After  consultation  with  him  I  determined 
to  make  a  plain  statement  such  as  is  due  to  the 
elected  representatives  of  France.  The  Timbuctoo 
Waterworks  are  being  built  to  ensure  the  supply  of 
water  in  Timbuctoo.  The  undertaking  is  one  which 
redounds  to  the  honour  of  France  and  consolidates 
the  peace  of  Europe.  The  honourable  M.  Dumont 
(with  whom  I  have  privately  consulted)  desired  to 
know  the  part  taken  by  Germany,  Austria,  and 
Turkey  in  the  Timbuctoo  Waterworks.  Gentlemen, 
I  will  be  perfectly  frank  with  you.  We  are  certainly 
in  accord  with  the  attitude  of  Italy  in  the  matter. 
Our  relations  with  Finland  bear  the  imprint  of  the 
greatest  cordiality.  In  conclusion,  I  will  once  more 
affirm  from  the  bottom  of  my  patriotic  heart  the 
solidity  of  our  alliance  with  Russia,  the  stability  of 
our  cordial  understanding  with  Great  Britain,  and 
the  firm  faith  of  the  Government  of  the  Republic 

110 


POLITICIANS 

in  the  greatness  and  prosperity  of  France."  The 
Minister  receives  the  congratulations  of  his  colleagues 
of  the  Cabinet  and  of  many  members  of  the  Govern- 
ment's majority  and  even  the  Extreme  llight  and 
the  Extreme  Left  minorities. 

A  studied  comparison  of  Parliamentary  speeches 
in  the  two  countries  will  show  that  French  political 
oratory  has  no  conscious  humour.  The  agreeable 
sallies  of  our  brilliant  M.P.s  have  no  counterpart 
in  the  Chamber.  Our  young,  caustic,  and  witty 
members  have  no  brothers  among  French  Deputies. 
"  Rires  "  occurs  rarely  in  the  reports  of  debates,  and 
usually  when  a  speaker  has  the  Marseilles  accent. 
On  the  other  hand.  Parliamentary  eloquence,  when 
up  to  a  certain  mark,  is  always  taken  seriously  in 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  Rhetoric  never  raises  a 
laugh,  provided  it  hang  together  properly.  The 
reason  precisely  is  that  French  parliamentary  rhetoric 
almost  always  does  finish  its  sentence,  round  off  its 
periods,  close  its  parentheses,  and  that  its  most 
amazing  flights  can  be  parsed.  The  two  idiosyn- 
crasies of  French  Parliamentary  speaking  are  "  tech- 
nical "  Parliamentary  language,  which  judged  by  any 
canon  applicable  to  the  real  French  language  is 
nonsense,  and  French  "  statesmanlike "  language, 
which  is  a  vehicle  unequalled  in  Europe  for  the  neat 
expression  of  nothing  in  specious  words.  The  two 
idiosyncrasies  of  English  party  eloquence  are  its 
"  humour  "  and  its  masterly  command  of  ambiguity. 

Ill 


PRESS 


VII 

PRESS 

If  one  had  to  compare  the  Enghsh  and  the  French 
Press  in  four  words,  one  might  say  that  the  former 
is  honest  and  stupid  and  the  latter  corrupt  and 
intelhgent.  Of  course  the  Enghsh  Press  is  not 
entirely  stupid  nor  wholly  honest,  and  the  French 
is  sometimes  stupid  and  sometimes  honest.  But  one 
may  say  generally  that  the  former  has  more  and  the 
latter  less  character  than  sense.  There  are  still 
several  English  newspapers  which  are  straight  busi- 
ness concerns  and  straight  journalistic  concerns ;  in 
the  French  Press  of  to-day  trade  honesty  and  pro- 
fessional honesty  are  both  small.  Blackmail  by 
newspaper,  bribery  of  newspapers,  the  illegitimate 
sale  of  news  by  other  means  than;  its  publication 
are  comparatively  rare  in  England  and  frequent  in 
France.  The  offices  of  leading  English  newspapers 
are  much  more  orderly  and  more  efficiently  managed 
than  the  chief  Government  departments  of  the 
English  State  ;  their  walls  have  never  heard  a  tenth 
part  of  the  amazing  intrigues  famihar  to  French 
newspaper    offices.      The    best    French    journahstic 

115  I  2 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

undertaking  is  a  cut-throat  and  cut-purse  game. 
The  Naval  Expert  holds  an  T.O.U.  from  the  "  Secre- 
tary of  the  Editorship"  (a  superior  sort  of  chief 
sub-editor),  which  he  does  not  press  and  which  could 
not  be  met  if  he  did.  The  Foreign  Editor  remembers 
that  the  Colonial  Expert  was  mixed  up  in  a  nasty 
Siamese  business  in  189-  and  has  evidence  to  prove 
his  recollection.  The  Dramatic  Critic  is  the  lover  of 
the  wife  of  the  Musical  Critic,  who  knows  it.  The 
Proprietor  quarrels  with  the  Foreign  Editor  and  sacks 
him,  appointing  the  Colonial  Expert  to  succeed  him. 
The  ex-Foreign  Editor  threatens  the  Colonial  Expert 
with  exposure ;  the  Colonial  Expert  induces  his 
particular  friend,  the  Naval  Expert,  to  threaten  the 
Chief  Sub-Editor,  who  is  the  ex-Foreign  Editor's 
brother-in-law.  The  Chief  Sub- Editor  threatens  the 
Dramatic  Critic,  a  close  friend  of  the  Naval  Expert, 
that  he  will  "  tell  the  husband,"  unless  the  Dramatic 
Critic  talks  to  the  Naval  expert.  The  Dramatic 
Critic  replies  that  the  Musical  Critic  knows  already 
and  he  won't  talk  to  the  Naval  Expert.  The  ex- 
Foreign  Editor  is  in  clicck  until  he  finds  another 
move  :  the  Chief  Police-court  Reporter  owes  his  billet 
to  having  been  used  as  an  instrument  in  a  shady 
stock-exchange  deal  by  the  Proprietor,  the  ex- 
Foreign  Editor  buys  him  off  and  with  his  help  starts 
a  series  of  articles  (in  a  Conservative  paper,  if  his 
original  paper  was  Socialist,  in  a  Socialist  if  it  was 
Conservative),  showing  up  the  Proprietor.     The  first 

IIG 


PRESS 

two  still  mild  are  printed,  the  advance  proofs  of  the 
succeeding  instalment  are  sent  round  to  the  Pro- 
prietor, who  considers  the  situation  for  one  hour, 
then  gives  in  and  reinstates  his  ex-Foreign  Editor. 
The  Colonial  Expert  becomes  Colonial  Expert  again. 
The  Cabinet,  which  he  had  violently  attacked  (or 
enthusiastically  supported)  because  his  predecessor 
enthusiastically  supported  (or  violently  attacked)  it 
is  enthusiastically  supported  (or  violently  attacked) 
again.  The  public,  which  derives  its  opinions  on 
foreign  policy  almost  solely  from  that  particular 
paper,  concludes,  after  duly  weighing  two  or  three 
foreign  articles,  that  there  are  unmistakable  signs  of 
a  change  in  the  European  situation  for  the  better 
(or  worse).  In  the  office  all  is  smooth  again,  except 
for  the  Chief  Police-court  Reporter  and  the  INIusical 
Critic,  both  of  whom  are  sacked,  the  one  because 
everybody  drops  him  and  the  other  because  the 
Dramatic  Critic,  the  bigger  man  of  the  two,  elbows 
him  out,  having  decided  that  his  position  will  be 
more  regular  if  he  gets  rid  of  the  husband  altogether 
and  after  divorce  marries  the  wafe.  The  Assistant- 
Chief  Police-court  Reporter  becomes  Chief  Police- 
court  Reporter  solely  because  he  is  a  good  journalist. 
The  front  page  humourist  is  appointed  Musical 
Critic  because  he  is  first  cousin  to  an  impresario. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  imagine,  if  one  could, 
such  complicated  games  being  played  in  a  solemn 
English  newspaper  office.     They,  or  parts  of  them, 

117 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

are  commonly  played  in  the  chief  French  newspaper 
offices.  The  general  public  knows  nothing  of  them 
because  the  general  public  knows  only  what  the 
papers  tell  it,  and  the  papers  stick  more  or  less  to- 
gether. The  Anarchist  Editor  calls  the  Royalist 
Editor  a  highway  robber  and  a  bloodthirsty  cut- 
throat, and  the  Royalist  Editor  calls  the  Government 
criminal  for  not  instantly  beheading  the  Anarchist 
Editor.  But  the  Royalist  Editor  and  the  Anarchist 
Editor  seldom  publish  what  little  things  they  may 
happen  to  know  about  each  other's  private  business. 

Blackmail  is  a  regular  source  of  income  to  several 
French  newspapers.  A  virtuously  indignant  show- 
up  of  some  private  or  public  undertaking  is  begun 
and  carried  on  crescendo  for  two  or  three  days ;  the 
fourth  dead  silence ;  the  fifth  a  repeat  mezzo  forte ; 
the  sixth  silence ;  the  seventh  an  echo  ppp ;  after 
that  no  more  is  heard.  On  the  fourth  day  the  under- 
taking had  opened  negotiations,  on  the  sixth  it  paid 
with  promise  of  more,  on  the  eighth  it  paid  up  finally. 
The  system  of  secret  Government  subsidies  to  news- 
papers is  general  and  absurd.  A  journal  of  much 
importance  will  commonly  draw  £lO(),  or  even  £80 
a  month,  from  the  Home  Office,  no  one  seems  to 
know  why,  either  in  the  journal  or  at  the  Home 
Office.  The  bribe  is  too  small  to  be  of  the  slightest 
use  either  to  the  paper  or  to  the  Government.  Tlie 
system  is  a  tradition,  nevertlielcss ;  the  paper  would 
feel  slighted,  the  Home  Office  would  be  offended,  if 

118 


PRESS 

one  or  the  other  broke  with  it.  Paid  puffs,  disguised 
as  "  news  "  or  "  hterary  copy,"  are  the  rule.  The 
financial  column  is  entirely  paid  for ;  for  a  notice  of 
a  concert  the  Proprietor  will  ask  the  Musical  Critic 
how  much  he  got  and  claim  half.  One  journalist  has 
made  actually  a  literary  reputation  by  writing  puffs 
of  patent  medicines.  Professional  dishonesty  is  very 
common.  Few  reporters  or  editors  stick  at  "  faking." 
"  Interviews  "  are  constantly  published  with  persons 
who  have  never  seen  the  "  interviewer  "  or  who  told 
him  the  contrary  of  what  he  made  them  say.  "  Tele- 
grams by  Special  Wire  from  our  own  Correspondent " 
are  half  the  time  cooked  up  in  Paris  by  a  sub-editor 
from  a  Havas  Agency  message.  In  slack  seasons 
Anarchist  plots  are  invented,  sometimes  with  the  help 
of  the  police.  When  a  "  sensational  case  "  is  on  re- 
porters dog,  bully,  browbeat,  and  sometimes  blackmail 
all  connected  with  it.  Political  unfairness  is  shame- 
less and  funny.  A  great  deal  of  French  political 
journalism  still  lives  in  Eatanswill.  If  an  M.P.  hits 
another  in  a  cafe  the  Socialist  paper  reports  that  the 
Socialist-Radical  Deputy  made  the  Unified  Socialist 
Deputy  run  like  a  rabbit,  green  with  terror;  the 
Unified-Socialist  paper  reports  that  the  Unified- 
SociaUst  withered  with  scathing  scorn  the  Socialist- 
Radical,  whose  knees  bent  beneath  him,  and  he  had  to 
be  restored  with  brandy  by  supporters.  For  over  a  year 
M.  Henri  Rochefort  described  daily  how  the  Presi- 
dent and  the  Ministers  of  the  Republic  were  melting 

119 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

down  the  sacred  vessels  of  all  the  churches  of  France 
and  pocketing  the  proceeds.  A  trade  unionist,  a 
priest,  arrested  on  a  charge,  are  convicted  before  trial, 
the  one  by  the  Conservative,  the  other  by  the  Socialist 
papers ;  if  the  prisoner's  political  opinions  are  not 
obvious,  all  the  Press  convicts  him  before  trial.  If 
he  is  afterwards  found  not  guilty  by  the  jury,  his 
acquittal  is  very  frequently  not  even  reported.  The 
methods  and  resources  of  the  French  Press  are  small 
compared  with  those  of  the  English.  It  has  not  yet 
understood  that  to  rise  above  blackmail,  bribery,  sub- 
sidies and  professional  and  political  dishonesty  would 
be  for  it  a  business  gain.  It  spends  pence  where  the 
English  Press  spends  pounds,  saves  money  and  loses 
time  by  foolish  cheeseparing  in  the  sending  of  news, 
uses  old  printing  machinery,  makes  sixpence  and  loses 
a  shillingsworth  of  caste  by  puffs,  is  at  once  brazen 
and  timid,  pestering  and  weak. 

One  who  knew  the  methods  of  the  French  Press 
and  had  not  read  a  French  paper  would  suppose  no 
French  paper  to  be  worth  reading. 

This  weak  and  rotten  French  Press  seems  as  if  it 
ought  not  to  count,  yet  it  does — by  sheer  intelli- 
gence ;  mere  brains  work  wonders.  The  French 
Press  counts,  not  only  because  it  takes  in  those  who 
take  it  seriously  and  at  whom  it  laughs  in  its  sleeve, 
but  also  because  its  intelligence  must  be  taken 
seriously  however  little  its  character  can  be.  It  im- 
poses upon  the  world  with  amazing  success.     It  can 

120 


PRESS 

quite  well  build  a  house  with  an  ounce  of  bricks  and 
mortar,  a  political  revelation  with  the  shadow  of  the 
possibility  of  a  fact ;  the  English  Press  cannot  build 
as  well  with  a  ton  of  facts.  When  the  French  Press 
has  done  building  with  nothing,  the  English  looks  and 
says  there  really  must  be  something  in  it.  The  latter 
is  quick  at  getting  news  by  money  and  power,  the 
latter  is  ten  times  quicker  at  guessing  it.  The  "  grand 
reportere,"  that  is  to  say,  the  star  soothsayer,  the 
divining  poet  of  the  French  Press  knows  how  to 
invent :  having  invented  sufficiently  well  and  long, 
he  thus  arrives  by  a  natural  and  well-recognised  pro- 
cess at  the  truth,  and  when  he  has  got  there  he  looks 
back  at  the  English  journalist  still  on  the  way.  The 
English  journalist  knew  something  when  he  still 
knew  nothing ;  when  he  knows  everything  the 
EngUsh  journalist  still  knows  only  something ;  and 
the  English  journalist  begins  solemnly  quoting  him. 
Then  it  is  he  laughs  in  his  sleeve.  Often  the  English 
journalist  begins  quoting  him  while  he  is  still  in- 
venting, and  that  is  his  greatest  triumph.  The 
English  Press  translates  his  guesses  into  solid  English 
leaders,  his  guesses  solidify  in  the  process,  Downing 
Street  handles  the  solid  English  leaders,  his  guesses 
become  facts — and  thus  the  grand  reportere  has  moved 
the  world.  He  triumphs  constantly  in  international 
politics.  So  true  is  it  that  imagination  is  the  essential 
gift. 

It  is  much  more  important  that  the  journalist 

121 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

should  anticipate  intelligently  than  that  he  should 
anticipate  honestly ;  if  he  guesses  wrong  it  will  serve 
him  little  to  have  had  honest  grounds  to  go  upon, 
and  when  he  has  guessed  right  nobody  cares  if  he 
were  bluffing  when  he  began.  He  can't  do  worse 
than  prove  a  bad  prophet,  and  nothing  either  ex- 
tenuates or  aggravates  the  crime  of  being  one. 

The  Paris  Press  applies  its  intelligence  first  of  all 
to  Paris.  The  London  Press  does  not  get  a  quarter 
as  much  out  of  London  as  the  Paris  Press  does  out  of 
Paris ;  the  one  makes  London  dull,  the  other  makes 
Paris  interesting.  A  trail  of  fataUstic  boredom  lies 
over  everything  written  about  what  happens  in 
London,  nothing  that  happens  there  ever  awakens  a 
London  journalist's  imagination.  It  is  all  in  his  day's 
humdrum  work  ;  he  has  not  the  slightest  hope  that 
anything  in  London  that  he  will  ever  have  to  write 
about  will  ever  entertain  him,  he  is  resigned  to  his 
Fleet  Street  fate.  Kings  are  crowned  and  die  and 
are  buried,  the  people  dimly  thinks  new  thoughts  and 
shows  that  it  does,  men  play  astonishing  tragedies 
and  great  comedies,  life  goes  on  uncramped  in  the 
most  monstrous  of  cities :  all  he  finds  to  say  is  that 
London  is  indeed  the  capital  of  the  Empire.  State 
shows,  wealth  and  power  violently  displayed,  strange 
rumblings  from  l)eneath,  crime,  farce,  murder, 
burglary,  divorce,  these  do  not  suggest  anything 
to  him.  He  looks  at  pageants  and  cannot  see  the 
host  for  the  uniforms,  the  mass  for  the  details ;  he  is 

122 


PRESS 

humbly  besought  to  attend  peeresses'  balls  and 
describe  the  dresses,  he  tells  us  what  Lady  Blank 
wore  and  can't  tell  us  what  Lord  Blank  thought ; 
went  over  Blank  House  and  can't  tell  us  what  it 
looks  like,  took  down  guests'  names  and  forgot  to 
read  their  faces.  He  goes  to  public  meetings  and 
takes  down  the  speeches  in  shorthand,  and  never 
reports  the  audience  who  are  far  more  important, 
or  even  thinks  of  keeping  a  sketch-book  in  which  to 
draw  their  portraits ;  he  could  recite  to  us  most 
political  speeches  beforehand,  he  can  tell  us  nothing 
about  the  Hsteners,  because  he  has  not  the  slightest 
idea  himself  what  they  are.  The  historic  discovery 
of  SociaHsm  by  the  English  middle-classes  at  the 
General  Election  of  1906  was  due  partly  to  this 
cause.  He  reports  crimes,  accidents,  lawsuits,  and 
never  seems  to  understand  what  they  mean.  In  these 
cases  of  course  the  fear  of  libel  laws  and  contempt  of 
court  afford  him  a  welcome  excuse,  but  even  after 
the  case  is  over,  after  the  man  is  hanged  or  the 
decree  made  absolute,  the  leader-writer  never  inter- 
poses with  anything  but  solemn  platitudes  ;  criminal 
or  civil  cases  which  told  us  more  about  our  times 
than  volumes  of  sociology  have  suggested  nothing  to 
London  j  ournalism.  A  well-known  London  j  ournahst, 
who  was  peculiar  because  he  had  imagination,  wished 
to  write  what  one  of  the  most  curious  murders  known 
suggested  to  him.  He  told  me  that  his  editor  did 
not  think  the  subject  of  sufficient  human  interest. 

123 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

The  Paris  Press  lives  first  of  all  to  write  about 
Paris.     A  few  papers  follow  what  happens  outside 
Paris  ;  all  make  Paris  interesting.    They  watch  every 
instant  and   every   inch   of  Paris   with   tender   and 
amusing  care.   They  do  not  "  report  "  Paris,  they  live 
with  her,  feel  with  her,  often  live  for  her ;  they  often 
make  Paris.     Nothing  she  does  is  foreign  to  them, 
everything  Parisian  gives  them  good  "  copy."      If  a 
king  goes  to  Paris,  as  they   often  ;do,  the  Parisian 
journalist  does  more  than  "  interview  "  the  king,  he 
reads,  construes  and   dissects   him.     He  gives   deft 
little  pictures  of  him  which  are  psychologically  true, 
however  imaginary  the  facts ;  not  only  invents  but 
finds  out  tiny  anecdotes  that  paint  the  man ;  is  not 
afraid  to  tell  pleasantly  sharp  stories  about  the  very 
king  that  he  is  fondest  of.     The  kings  as  a  matter  of 
fact  like  it,  and  any  king  worth  his  salt  prefers  to  be 
disrespectfully  made  amusing  in  Paris  than  respect- 
fully made  dull  in  London.    The  Paris  Press  with  its 
conscienceless   heedlessness  gets   nearer  to   the  real 
man  than  the  conscientious  London  Press.     The  real 
Edward  VII.  was  much  better  made  known  by  the 
former  than  by  the  latter,  and  had  the  Paris  Press 
never  been  busied  with  him  the  outside  public  never 
would  have  been  able  to  draw  his  true  portrait.      No 
one  can  understand  wliy  a  king  who  goes  to  I^ondon 
becomes  in  the  I^ondon  l*ress  a  royal  shadow  which 
nothing  the  man  in  the  street  reads  in  his  paper  helps 
him  to  put  flesh  and  blood  to.     The  crowd  on  the 

124 


PRESS 

kerbstone  sees  the  king  pass  and  tells  itself  with 
amazement,  "  he  is  dark,  he  is  fair,  he  is  fat,  he  is 
thin,  he  looks  jolly,  he  looks  sour,  he  is  a  scorcher,  he 
is  a  milksop  "  ;  his  paper  never  whispered  to  him  that 
the  king  could  be  a  man  at  all.  The  man  in  the 
London  street  sees  always  more  than  his  paper  saw ; 
the  Parisian  in  the  street  generally  learns  from  his 
paper.  In  the  case  of  kings,  deference  is  no  excuse 
for  the  London  Press  ;  the  Parisian  journalist  loves  a 
king,  none  more,  and  tells  us  the  more  about  him  the 
more  he  loves  him.  He  is  not  the  less  but  the  more 
a  courtier  when  he  does  his  best  to  make  us  understand 
the  man  the  king  is,  so  far  as  he  understands  him.  Of 
all  the  mass  of  journalism  written  about  Edward  VII. 
the  latter  was  alive  only  in  what  the  Paris  Press  wrote 
about  him ;  the  Paris  Press,  nevertheless,  lay  down 
before  Edward  VII.  and  worshipped  him. 

The  Paris  journalist  is  always  discovering  Paris 
with  delight.  The  London  journalist  almost  never 
discovers  London.  To  the  former  every  little  Parisian 
thing  suggests  a  journalistic  idea,  in  every  stone  he 
can  find  "copy "and  of  its  kind  good  "copy."  A 
new  lamp-post  put  up  inspires  him  with  a  paragraph 
in  best  imitation  Anatole  France,  he  feels  he  must 
make  a  La  Bruyere  character  out  of  any  boulevard 
type  he  had  not  met  before,  a  new  poster  is  worth  a 
Banvillesque  ode.  JNI.  Raoul  Ponchon  for  years  has 
published  little  poems  in  one  of  the  "  yellowest " 
dailies  every  Monday  about  the  passing  moment  of 

125 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Paris,  many  of  which  those  who  care  have  cut  out 
and  put  by,  for  they  will  keep  a  place  in  literature, 
but  he  has  always  refused  to  collect  any  of  them  in 
book  form.  This  is  just  what  the  English  Press  has 
found  a  "journalese  "  phrase  for,  "feeling  the  public 
pulse,"  but  just  what  the  English  Press  does  not  do. 
"  One  idea  a  day "  was  the  old  French  journalese 
phrase  of  Emile  de  Girardin  and  Villemessant ;  find- 
ing or  making  one  "  sensational "  fact  a  day  and 
getting  no  idea  at  all  out  of  it  is  a  different  poUcy  :  a 
very  small  daily  fact  will  do  to  get  the  daily  idea  out 
of,  but  the  journalist  must  know  how.  The  Paris 
Press  gets  great  fun  out  of  its  "  faits  divers."  What 
would  the  Phantom  millions,  the  Steinheil  case  have 
been  without  the  Paris  Press  ?  Such  things  happen 
just  as  much  in  London ;  their  peculiar  charm  when 
they  happen  in  Paris  comes  not  from  the  events 
themselves,  but  solely  from  what  the  Paris  Press 
puts  into  them.  Think  what  the  Paris  Press  would 
have  made  of  the  Druce-Portland  case. 

It  is  the  twopenny-ha'penny  corrupt  French  Press, 
not  the  powerful  and  correct  English,  still  less  the  all- 
powerful,  disreputable  and  mad  American  Press  that 
in  the  word  of  American  journalese  is  "  alive."  It 
makes  Paris  and  the  different  worlds  of  Paris  "  alive." 
Of  course,  it  makes  the  thcjitrical  world  alive,  half  the 
Paris  l*ress  lives  to  do  that.  Paris  moralists  regularly 
shake  their  heads  over  paragraphs  about  the  actress 
who  appeared  clad  in  a  tiger-skin  and  the  author  who 

126 


PRESS 

keeps  a  pet  crocodile,  about  the  much-discussed 
dramatist  whose  wife  is  his  severest  critic's  mistress 
and  the  literary  duchess  who  is  infatuated  with  the 
younger  son  of  the  jeune  premier  of  fifty-five.  But 
the  tittle-tattle  of  Boulevard  theatres  is  at  least 
amusing,  it  goes  beyond  the  advertisement  of  an 
actor  by  the  periodical  announcement  of  his  engage- 
ment to  the  Suburban  girl,  or  the  Mormon  girl,  or 
whichever  girl  it  may  for  the  time  be.  No  doubt  it 
is  wrong  to  busy  us  with  the  hetaira's  successes, 
with  the  old  man's  loves  of  the  great  sentimental 
dramatist,  with  the  young  bounder  poet's  last  use- 
ful conquest.  But  these  feeble  figures  in  the  Paris 
Press  do  at  least  live — they  live  at  least  in  the  Paris 
Press,  for  it  is  the  Paris  Press  which  really  makes 
them  live.  They  would  be  only  shadows  if  ingenious 
scandalmongering  did  not  give  them  body.  They 
understand  this  quite  well  themselves  and  contentedly 
suffer  the  Press  to  invent  stories  about  them  much 
more  cleverly  than  they  could  on  their  own.  The 
little  Paris  journalist  who  calls  himself  a  "  theatre- 
runner  "  usually  has  a  great  deal  more  intelligence 
than  the  Parisian  actor  whom  he  runs  after  and  round 
and  who  often  is  curiously  stupid.  Either  London 
actors  have  not  yet  understood  how  to  be  advertised 
or  else  theatrical  journalists  are  not  capable  of  doing 
it  for  them.  Not  the  smallest  thing  happens  in  the 
Paris  theatrical  world  but  what  the  Paris  papers 
bubble  all  over  with  little  stories  about  the  authors 

127 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

and  the  actors  concerned,  absurd  stories,  delicious 
stories,  spiteful  ones,  scandalous  ones,  about  the  socks 
of  M.  Paul  B.,  the  many  wives  of  M.  Alfred  E.,  and 
how  much  he  habitually  pensions  each  off  with,  the 
wild  efforts  of  ]M.  Alfred  C.  to  be  respectable  and 
Academic  in  his  elderly  age,  the  catastrophes  of  M. 
Charles  L.'s  married  life,  the  latest  amours  of  the 
entertaining  Madame  A.  and  INIonsieur  G.,  the  unique 
conceit  of  Signor  A.  who  is  tired  of  conquering,  and 
the  most  spiteful  little  stories  are  not  always  the  least 
useful  advertisement.  The  theatrical  news  of  Paris 
papers  is  the  most  intelligent  scandalmongering  in 
contemporary  journalism. 

Political  Paris  is  also  made  "  alive."  Perhaps 
English  politicians  would  sacrifice  some  of  the  huge 
awe  with  which  they  are  still  surrounded  for  a  Uttle 
of  the  lively  limelight  that  plays  about  French  ones, 
and  would  not  mind  being  taken  a  little  less  seriously 
by  the  English  Press  if  it  could  make  them  a  little 
more  interesting.  No  man  is  less  respected  by  the 
Paris  Press  than  the  politician,  but  it  never  bores  us 
with  him.  He  is  flouted  and  guyed  and  blackguarded, 
he  is  never  made  dull,  he  is  always  amusing  or 
picturesque  ;  if  no  fun  or  colour  can  be  got  out  of 
him  at  all  he  is  ignored.  The  Paris  Press  has  been 
the  making  of  most  French  politicians,  and  very  often 
best  made  them  when  it  most  meant  to  mar  them. 
In  a  world  of  dull  journalism,  M.  Clemenceau  would 
never  have  become  the  man  he  was.     His  quips  and 

128 


PRESS 

cranks  had  to  be  taken  up  instantly  or  they  would 
have  fallen  flat.     He  would  have  been  picturesque  in 
vain  if  he  had  had  no  Press  able  immediately  to  see 
and   show   that   he  was.     Every  quilpish   move   he 
made,  every  elfin  word  he  said  was  instantly  made 
the  most  of  with  great  profit  to  him,  especially  by  his 
enemies.      His    gay   betrayals   in   office   of    all   the 
principles   he   professed  out  of  it  were   held  up  to 
scorn  in  minute  detail,  minute   by  minute,  and   he 
chuckled  ;  M.  Jaures  particularly  proved  every  day 
what  an  abandoned  despot  he  was,  and  he  rubbed  his 
hands  as  each  fresh  lunge  at  him  made  the  bigger 
man  of  him.     The  London  Press,  better  disciplined, 
is  always  careful  not   to   make   political   opponents 
picturesque ;  unluckily  it  makes  political  friends  dull 
also.     M.  Briand  was  even  a  more  brilliant  creation 
of  the  Paris  Press,  accomplished  in  barely  a  couple  of 
years.     Of  course,  like  M.  Clemenceau,  he  lent  a 
helping  hand  in  his  own  making,  but  he  also  would 
have  flourished  only  half  as  well  in  an  unimaginative 
medium.     His  cameleonlike  adaptability  would  have 
been  in  great  part  wasted  if  a  quick  Press  had  not  at 
once  perceived  and  demonstrated  how  exciting  it  was 
to  watch   him  at  it,  whether   ingeniously  adapting 
hard   and  fast   laws   to   fluid   facts,   or   ingenuously 
adapting  his  principles  to  his  place.     He  would  not 
have  been  half  such  a  great  man  if  the  Press  had  not 
dramatised  strikes,  but  the  Paris  journalist's  dramatic 
sense  is  always  invaluable  to  French   public  men ; 

129  K 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

English  Cabinet  Ministers  put  down  worse  strikes, 
but  the  English  Press  carefully  keeps  its  imagination 
damp  and  the  poor  wretches  get  no  glory.  The 
English  Press  at  the  same  time  is  always  taken  in  by 
the  dramatic  sense  of  the  French.  The  latter  sees 
the  picturesque  possibilities  of  a  Briand  and  a  strike, 
the  former  then  sees  them  also ;  a  few  fine  dabs  of 
colour,  M.  Briand  is  the  heaven-sent  saviour  or  the 
bloody  assassin,  has  rescued  France  from  anarchy  or 
prostituted  her  to  tyranny,  and  forthwith  the  English 
Press  swallows  it  all  and  hails  Aristide  Briand  the 
hero.  It  never  helps  on  its  own  public  men  in  this 
way.  If  the  Paris  Press  had  ever  had  the  managing 
of  London  for  six  weeks  Mr.  Balfour  would  soon 
have  been  in  shining  armour,  and  Mr.  Asquith  riding 
a  coal-black  charger.  For  a  good  while  it  laboured 
almost  successfully  to  dramatise  our  own  politics  for 
us,  then  tired  of  the  subject,  finding  us  hopelessly 
unresponsive.  The  Paris  Press  makes  Paris  public 
men  interesting.  Guying  M.  Jaur^s  is  the  daily 
game  of  the  Conservative  French  Press,  from  his 
eloquence  ;to  his  nose,  from  his  fat  paunch  to  his 
slithy  dialectics,  but  who  supposes  that  it  hurts  him  ? 
No  statesman  was  ever  more  melodramatically 
denounced  than  M.  Delcassc^s  but  the  quick  drama, 
which  in  one  scene  not  only  brought  him  on  again 
but  dismissed  M.  Clemenceau,  was  instantly  made 
the  most  of  'Vhe  political  l*aris  Press  slanders, 
libels,  lies,  misrepresents,  has  almost  no  respect  for 

130 


PRESS 

private  lives,  but  Paris  politicians  in  the  long  run  gain 
instead  of  losing  by  it.  The  proof  is  that  more  of 
them  become  picturesque  figures  in  Europe  than  of 
other  countries'  politicians.  The  American  Press  also 
libels  and  Hes,  but  nobody  in  Europe  marks  it,  and 
it  does  not  make  its  politicians  picturesque.  Mr. 
Roosevelt  was  oppressive,  but  could  hardly  have  been 
called  interesting. 

The  Paris  Press  keeps  even  its  shorthand  re- 
porters awake;  its  Parliamentary  reports  are  often 
delicious  reading.  They  would  be  a  scandal  in 
Fleet  Street  or  at  Westminster,  respectable  Parlia- 
mentary staffs  of  newspapers  would  be  aghast,  the 
House  would  visit  hideous  penalties  on  the  offenders. 
Some  London  party  papers  shyly  try  to  prejudice  an 
opponent  and  favour  a  supporter  in  Parliamentary 
reports,  but  the  timid  attempt  would  be  smiled  at  in 
Paris.  The  French  Parliamentary  reporter  describes 
how  the  House  now  snored  ostentatiously  while  I\I. 
Durand  spoke,  now  turned  his  back  deliberately  upon 
the  *'  orator  "  ;  M.  Dupont,  on  the  contrary,  electrified 
the  assembly  and  members  tumbled  over  each  other 
to  shake  hands  with  him  when  he  came  down  from 
the  tribune.  What  M.  Durand  said  is  not  mentioned 
in  the  paper  of  M.  Dupont's  party,  M.  Dupont's 
speech  is  printed  in  a  much  more  coherent  form  than 
he  spoke  it.  The  reporter  interlards  his  report : 
"  here  M.  .Taures  fell  up  to  his  neck  once  more  in  that 
slough  of  flatulent   hyperbole  which  is   his  natural 

131 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

element.  Here  M.  Pelletan,  having  had  too  much 
absinthe.  .  .  .  Here  M.  Briand  tried  on  his  old 
wheedling  harlot  manner,  but  it  was  too  stale  to  trick 
the  House  any  more,"  then  resumes  his  report.  He 
does  not  the  least  harm  to  the  victims  of  his  interpo- 
lations. The  Paris  Press  has  done  great  damage  in 
the  public  credit  to  the  Parliamentary  system  gener- 
ally ;  individual  politicians  whom  it  flouted  it  has  not 
hurt  but  helped  if  there  was  anything  at  all  in  them. 
Reporters''  interjaculatory  groans  and  gasps  over 
Jaur^s  eloquence  only  drove  the  idea  home  in  the 
public  mind  that  whatever  else  he  may  be  he  is  an 
orator,  and  jibes  at  the  Briand  blarney  only  persuaded 
the  pubUc  which  had  not  heard  him  that  he  must  be 
a  wonder.  In  England,  some  newspaper  readers 
wade  through  Parliamentary  reports  with  grim, 
businesslike  thoroughness ;  no  one  is  attracted  by 
them,  there  is  little  real  fun  in  them,  and  the  humour 
of  comic  members  at  question  time  is  often  poor. 

What  the  public  wants  !  That  gag,  if  English 
journalism  does  not  take  care,  will  be  its  knell.  The 
proof  of  the  pudding  is  not  in  the  eating  when  the 
pudding  is  rammed  down  one's  throat.  French 
papers  never  bother  tlieir  heads  about  what  the 
pubhc  wants.  They  give  the  public  what  they  think 
the  public  ought  to  want,  and  the  public  gobbles  up 
what  is  given  it.  They  gi\'e  it  poisonous  yellow  stuff, 
and  it  eats  ;  they  give  it  delicate  and  wholesome  stuff, 
and  it  eats.     They  give  it  the  worst  sensationalism, 

132 


PRESS 

and  they  give  it  a  signed  criticism  of  Pragmatism  by 
Professor  Bergson ;  the  public  wants  the  one  just  as 
much  as  the  other.  The  English  Press  lives  in  a 
needless  dread  that  it  is  not  low  enough  for  the  public 
level.  Every  journalist  who  ever  thought  about  any- 
thing when  he  was  young  remembers  his  first  Mentor  s 
advice,  never  write  above  the  heads  of  your  readers. 
The  constant  effort  to  write  down  to  them  is  what 
paralyses  the  English  Press.  The  English  Press  is 
strangely  out  of  touch  with  the  English  public.  The 
man  in  the  street  thinks  and  says  more  than  ever  he 
reads  in  his  paper  ;  men  out  of  the  street  are  occupied 
with  many  curious  things  which  they  might  expect, 
but  would  expect  in  vain,  to  find  reflected  in  their 
papers.  The  former  looks  into  the  things  around 
him  much  more  than  his  paper  supposes,  and  he  is 
not  the  placid,  complacent  gazer  it  takes  him  to  be. 
The  smooth,  comfortable  blur  it  puts  all  over  life, 
and  just  as  much  when  making  great  shows  of  political 
fury  as  when  considerately  patting  the  public  on  the 
back,  is  not  in  his  mind's  eye  at  all.  He  sees  rather 
sharply,  he  is  not  comfortable,  he  is  rather  caustic, 
restless,  hungry.  Any  London  clerk,  any  'bus  con- 
ductor, has  thought  more  keenly  about  his  own  little 
world  than  ever  his  paper  taught  him,  has  thought 
sometimes  bitterly,  generally  with  humour,  while  his 
paper  solemnly  and  sleekly  talked  down  to  him.  He 
judges  freshly  and  boldly  and  speaks  out ;  no  leader 
writer  seems  ever  to  have  listened  to  him.     One  can 

133 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

hear  in  a  crowd  any  day  things  discussed  with  sense 
and  fun  and  pluck  which  the  Press  goes  on  wrapping 
round  and  round  with  the  same  timid  humming  and 
hawing.  The  foreigner  can  gather  no  idea  of  the  live 
spirit  of  the  common  EngUsh  people  from  the  Enghsh 
Press.  The  foreigner  in  France  can  get  a  very  good 
idea  of  the  vivacity  of  the  French  people  from  its 
Press — and  no  idea  at  all  of  its  solidity.  The  man 
out  of  the  street,  almost  as  much  as  the  man  in  the 
street,  thinks  over  the  heads  of  those  who  are  afraid 
of  writing  over  his.  He  is  properly  catered  for  by 
book  reviewers,  dramatic  critics  and  philosophers,  of 
course,  but  of  every  new  thought  his  paper  fights  shy, 
and  it  is  he  who  has  to  teach  it  to  his  paper.  Men 
who  have  freshly  thought,  men  who  have  at  least 
thought  some  small  new  thing,  have  been  ignored  by 
the  English  Press  for  years  during  which  the  thinking 
English  public  knew  and  watched  them.  Sometimes 
the  Press  of  other  countries  has  discovered  them  first, 
and  ours  has  stood  amazed.  Ideas  have  been  ignored 
certainly  as  much  as  men.  Yet  when  here  and  there 
in  a  paper  a  man  does  write  ahead  of  thinking  men, 
does  the  paper's  circulation  go  down  ?  Fleet  Street 
is  a  little  world  out  of  the  world ;  the  Paris  Press 
lives  in  the  world.  It  is  weak,  dishonest,  and  con- 
scienceless, but  it  is  run  by  men  who  are  in  the  world, 
not  merely  in  the  world  of  journalism.  It  is  much 
nearer  real  life  than  the  powerful  English  Press, 
nearer  not  only  to  the  ideas,  but  to  the  actual  facts 


TRESS 

of  life.  To  report  a  "  good  crime  "  is  something,  and 
that  the  Enghsh  Press  does,  but  to  understand  that  a 
good  crime  means  something  is  everything,  and  that 
the  French  Press  does. 

But  the  English  Press  seems  to  be  improving  and 
the  French  to  be  going  down.  English  newspaper 
articles  of  twenty  years  ago  are  to-day  unreadable, 
and  they  were  worse  written  than  those  of  to-day. 
French  journahsts  write  rather  worse  than  they  did 
when  they  had  not  yet  learnt  "  American  methods." 
The  French  Press  is  perhaps  not  less  intelligent,  but 
certainly  not  more  honest ;  the  English  Press  is 
probably  not  less  honest  and  perhaps  more  intelligent 
than  twenty  years  ago. 


135 


AVERAGES 


VIII 

AVERAGES 

Few  knowing  both  countries  equally  well  will  deny 
that  the  average  intelligence  is  higher  in  France  than 
in  England.  The  class  at  the  middle  level  of  culture, 
thinking,  and  possession  of  the  means  to  get  the  one 
and  do  the  other  is  brighter,  quicker,  sharper,  thinner- 
skuUed  in  the  former  than  in  the  latter  country.  It 
is  famiUar  with  more  ideas  and  handles  them  more 
easily ;  many  have  sunk  into  it  which  the  correspond- 
ing English  class  is  proof  against.  The  French 
bourgeoisie  has  learned  to  look  without  any  terrors 
upon  the  monster  art,  which  the  sister  class  in 
England  cannot  yet  eye  with  any  comfort.  It  is 
scarcely  more  remarkable  for  taste,  but  it  has  superior 
training.  Its  sofas,  its  carpets  and  its  hangings  are 
sometimes  even  worse  than  what  fills  corresponding 
English  drawing-rooms,  but  it  is  used  to  the  idea  of 
art,  the  idea  that  art  is  not  an  unhealthy  tumour  but 
a  normal  and  natural  growth.  It  cheerfully  allows 
art  a  place  in  the  world ;  it  may  not  itself  have  the 
"  artistic  temperament,"  but  it  is  ready  to  take  the 
latter  quite  seriously,  not  as  something  comic  to  be 

139 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

funny  about  or  improper  to  veil,  as  the  same  class 
does  in  England.  It  is  not  particularly  fond  of 
artists  and  fights  often  as  shy  of  them  as  any  English 
bourgeoisie,  but  it  is  quite  agreeable  they  should  be 
artists,  apart  from  any  money  they  may  make  by 
their  art. 

The  French  bourgeoisie  at  the  Salon  and  the 
English  at  the  Academy  can  be  compared.  The 
latter  instantly  asks,  "  What  is  the  picture  about  ? " 
The  former  is  ashamed  to.  The  former,  though  it 
has  got  beyond  the  sentimental  anecdote,  still  loves 
the  theatrical  one,  but  knows  it  shouldn't.  It  knows 
that  in  a  picture  it  ought  first  of  all  to  see  the 
painting,  a  simple  truth  seldom  plain  to  Royal 
Academy  visitors.  It  often  tries  honestly  to  apply 
this  knowledge,  says  to  itself  forcibly  :  "  We  will  not 
be  concerned  whether  this  portrait  is  like,  we  will 
not  consider  how  nice  we  think  uniforms  look  in  this 
pretty  battle-piece,  we  will,  we  must  observe  whether 
both  are  well  painted."  It  has,  in  fact,  understood 
that  art  yields  something  really  more  interesting  than 
anecdotes  do,  if  only  you  can  get  at  the  thing ;  it 
does  not  always  get  there,  but  it  tries.  The  average 
Royal  Academy  visitor  knows  that  to  pretend  that 
the  essential  thing  in  a  picture  is  not  the  story  it  tells 
is  absurd.  The  serenity  of  the  average  Salon  visitor 
lias  been  once  for  all  disturbed  by  the  discovery  that 
art  is  natural  and  he  can  never  recover  the  impervi- 
ousness  of  his  English  brother ;  he  no  longer,  as  the 

14-0 


AVERAGES 

latter  does,  looks  upon  it  as  a  monster,  but  on  the 
other  hand  he  can  no  longer,  as  the  latter  can,  wave 
it  aside.  He  is  troubled  therefore  constantly  by  the 
devilish  ingenuity  of  painters.  He  goes  to  the  two 
Salons,  but  he  must  also  go  to  the  Independents  and 
to  the  autumn  Salon.  He  is  that  collector  who 
bought  Corots  and  sold  them  to  buy  Manets,  sold  the 
Manets  to  buy  Cezannes,  sold  the  Cezannes  to  buy 
Henri-Matisses,  all  the  time  honestly,  all  the  time 
afraid  art  might  be  stealing  marches  on  him.  He  is 
inevitably  the  natural  prey  of  the  Henri-Matisses 
who  make  ten  times  fewer  victims  in  England.  But 
imperviousness  is  not  all  gain.  The  French  bour- 
geoisie gets  much  more  fun  out  of  its  partly  trained 
sensibility  to  the  art  of  painting  than  the  English  out 
of  its  virgin  insensibility. 

In  music  the  average  French  listener  has  made 
bad  blunders  and  he  still  has  his  pet  sins  ;  he  will  not 
have  Brahms  at  any  price,  he  believes  that  nearly  all 
Saint  Saens,  even  the  worst,  will  last,  and  he  honestly 
admires  much  Massenet.  His  English  brother  also 
admires  INIassenet  and  makes  mistakes  of  his  own  as 
well,  obstinately  overrating  Tshaikovsky,  for  instance. 
But  when  the  two  begin  to  make  music  on  their  own 
the  former's  taste  and  training  are  superior.  Both 
have  the  common  faults  of  average  audiences  which  a 
rubato  and  a  pianissimo  cadenza  fetch  as  surely  as  the 
right  bait  lands  the  fish,  but  at  home  the  EngUsh 
average  amateur  is  much  the  worse  of  the  two.     In  a 

141 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

London  drawing-room  a  man  or  a  woman  will  stand 
up  to  "  sing  "  without  having  the  slightest  idea  how 
to  do  it ;  they  would  not  dare  at  the  equivalent  Paris 
evening  party.  The  standard  of  drawing-room  sing- 
ing and  playing  is  much  higher  in  Paris ;  the  young 
person  must  play  Debussy  quite  well,  beginners  on 
the  violin  are  never  allowed  to  practise  before  a  large 
company  in  ball  dress.  It  is  indeed  surprising  what 
is  expected  of  the  musical  young  lady  in  Paris  ;  the 
painting  or  reading  or  writing  young  lady  amazes 
her  surroundings  by  one-tenth  of  the  same  pro- 
ficiency. The  English  girl  at  the  piano  is  not 
generally  asked  to  be  better  at  it  than  she  is  expected 
to  be  at  painting,  poetry  or  metaphysics.  The 
French  girl  who  has  never  read  more  than  the  same 
sort  of  novel  the  English  girl  reads  must  be  a  pianist 
by  the  side  of  the  latter  to  be  listened  to  by  a  Paris 
drawing-room  audience  for  five  minutes. 

The  French  bourgeoisie  has  learned  that  books 
may  be  read,  as  pictures  may  be  looked  at,  critically. 
That  there  is  an  art  of  writing,  is  an  idea  even  more 
familiar  to  it  than  that  there  is  one  of  painting.  It  is 
well  used  to  acknowledging  that  writing  needs  style, 
an  admission  for  which  its  English  sister  is  unprepared. 
That  there  is  a  literary  art  has  indeed  been  dinned 
into  it  from  childhood  through  a  long  and  deliberately 
planned  education.  University  purists  now  complain 
that  tlie  young  Frenchman  is  no  longer  taught  to 
write  French,  but  he  is  still  ten  times  as  much  taught 

142 


AVERAGES 

to  write  French  as  the  young  Englishman  is  to  write 
English.  His  people  agree  that  writing  does  not 
come  natural  to  everybody,  but  has  to  be  learned. 
They  remember  this  habitually,  almost  by  instinct, 
when  they  read.  The  least  well-read  among  them 
have  a  strong  command  of  the  jargon  of  literary 
technique,  which  is  certainly  more  disagreeable  to 
listen  to  than  the  prattle  of  ignorance,  but  certainly 
more  entertaining  to  utter.  The  best  read  have  almost 
got  to  the  point  of  nosing  out  fine  writing.  All  are 
accustomed  to  the  idea  that  there  is  an  art  in  putting 
words  together,  can  judge  an  exciting  story  coolly, 
can  read  with  pleasure  a  well-written  tame  story,  and 
honestly  care  how  a  newspaper  is  written.  The 
French  artist  can  write  for  the  French  bourgeois,  and 
Maupassant  was  appreciated  as  no  Enghsh  Maupas- 
sant would  have  been  by  the  average  EngMsh  public. 
The  standard  of  writing  written  for  the  many  is 
much  higher  in  France  than  in  England.  The  worst 
French  novels  are  better  written  than  the  average 
English  novel,  the  worst  English  novels  are  worse 
written  than  the  worst  French  "journalese,"  and  the 
best  French  journalism  is  good  writing.  In  literary 
tastes  and  training  English  averages  cannot  come  up 
to  French. 

The  French  bourgeoisie  looks  at  the  bare  facts  as 
well  as  the  ornaments  of  life  more  intelligently  than 
the  English,  if  the  latter  can  be  said  to  look  at  the 
bare  facts  of  life  at  all.     The  French  is  not  afraid  of 

143 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

looking  straight  at  a  certain  number  of  them,  while 
deliberately  shutting  its  eyes  to  others.   It  is  probably 
the  most  unpoetic,  most  matter-of-fact,  most  unsenti- 
mental middle-class  in  the  world.   Art  is  an  ornament 
of  life  which  it  recognises  well,  and  even  understands 
roughly  ;   poetry  it  does  not  acknowledge  to  be  an 
ornament  of  life.      Agreeable  verse  is  an  agreeable 
detail  of  art  and  an  acceptable  pastime  ;  the  poetic 
spirit  is  either  nonsense  or  a  danger,  more  probably 
the  former  ;  anyhow  it  must  be  and  is  kept  carefully 
out  of  life.     The  French  average  has  no  difficulty  in 
keeping  it  out ;  the  English   sometimes  lets  one  or 
two  drops  of  it  filter  in,  nothing  dangerous  of  course, 
not  enough  to  poison  one  healthy  mind,  but  still  one 
drop  or  two  of  it,  whereas  the  French  is  non-porous 
to  it.     The  Enghsh,  completely  closed  to  much  that 
the  French   is  open  to,  yet  admits  faint  strains  of 
fancy,  of  mystery,  and  of  poetry  which  the  French 
shuts  out.    Vague,  rudimentary  these  English  yearn- 
ings are,  producing  scarcely  anything  that  is  not  crude 
and  raw,  but  English  average  sentimentality  even  at 
its   worst,  and   even   the    silliest   forms   of  English 
fancy,  may  contain  traces  of  those  one  or  two  drops 
of  filtered  poetry.     The  French  average  is  not  senti- 
mental, knows  no  fancy  that  has  one  single  strain  of 
mystery.     In  spite,  or  because,  of  that,  it  looks  at 
the  bare  facts  of  life   ten  times  more  intelligently 
than   the   English.      I'erhaps    averages    must    keep 
out  even  the  faintest  shadows  of  dreams  if  they  are 

144 


AVERAGES 

to  know  the  substance  of  life  well.  Anyhow,  the 
French  does  keep  out  the  former  and  does  know  the 
latter. 

The  divine  average  in  French  is  perfectly  human. 
It  takes  the  substance,  the  matter  of  life  for  granted 
once  for  all,  and  looks  the  facts  all  round  and  talks 
about  them.  It  is  utterly  ignorant  of  the  English 
average's  shyness  and  feels  no  shame  in  life  ;  it  accepts 
life  as  life  is,  and  cannot  conceive  that  anyone  should 
not.  It  quarrels  with  the  contingencies,  never  with 
the  essence,  of  life.  It  never  questions  that  getting 
on  is  an  important  thing,  never  doubts  that  the  self- 
interest  of  man  and  family  rules  society  and  never 
pretends  that  it  does  not ;  never  supposes  or  feigns 
that  marrying  and  having  children  is  a  romance  and 
not  a  business  as  serious  as  managing  a  shop  or  a 
counting-house ;  never  makes  believe  that  sex  is  a 
fifth-rate  human  preoccupation,  never  calls  a  virgin 
a  woman,  never  ignores  the  polygamy  of  men.  It 
constantly  touches  earth  and  takes  its  stand  blandly 
on  all  the  primeval  truisms.  It  talks  calmly  about  its 
body  and  shocks  the  English  average.  It  enjoys  its 
food  habitually  at  home  with  as  much  care  as  the 
English  gourmet  does  at  his  club,  and  even  many  of 
its  women  can  distinguish  claret  from  Burgundy.  It 
obeys  a  strict  code  of  proprieties,  and  does  not  talk 
*'  Vie  Parisienne "  dialogue  at  home  (as  English 
averages  sometimes  suppose),  but  it  does  not  lay 
down   the    axiom    that   sex    does  not  exist.      The 

145  L 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

primeval  truism  is  always  acted  upon  that  a  maid 
does  not  know  sex ;   when  she  has  ceased  to  be  a 
maid  nobody  in  the  French  bourgeoisie  pretends  that 
she  does  not  know  what  sex  is,  or  that  sex  is  not  a 
quite  important  matter  to  her,  or  any  less  important, 
or  even  not  more  important,  to  a  virtuous  wife  than 
to  a  harlot.    Another  primeval  truism  is  always  acted 
upon ;  it  is  never  forgotten  that  the  male  and  female 
sexes  are  different.     No  one  pretends  that  a  woman 
or  man  can  be  unsexed,  that  a  maid  can  really  be  the 
equal  of  a  woman,  that  a  bachelor  and  a  maid  stand 
in  the  same  relation  towards  life.    In  fact,  the  French 
average  never  forgets  the  flesh.      The  English   re- 
members it  also,  sometimes  indeed  with  a  force  that 
astonishes  the  French,  but  it  more  often  pretends, 
and  also   honestly  tries,  to  forget  it,  and  thinks  it 
does.     A  cardinal  principle  of  English  education,  for 
instance,  is  to  let  sex  take  care  of  itself;  never  a 
word  or  a  confessed  thought  about   it.     Young  sex 
grows  up  wondering  secretly  at  itself,  among  bland 
adults  who  have  ceased  to  wonder  and  who  forget 
they  ever  wondered,  and  is  ignored ;  it  grows  under 
parents'  eyes  and  parents  calmly  shut  their  eyes.     It 
learns  to  know  itself  with  pain  and  shame  in  those 
little   tragedies   of   youth   wliich    English    averages 
hastily  bury  and  have  forgotten  by  the  time  their  turn 
comes  to  slmt  their  eyes.     The  French,  indeed,  teach 
no  A  B  C  of  sex  by  examples  drawn  from  botany :  they 
do  not,  contrary  to  some  beliefs,  talk  sex  round  the 

140 


AVERAGES 

family  dinner-table,  but  father  and  mother  are  equally 
quickly  aware  when  the  boy  has  become  a  man,  the 
girl,  of  course,  being,  if  possible,  married  off  at  the 
proper  time,  once  seventeen,  now  two-and-twenty. 
The  boy's  manhood  mother  and  father  think  of  and 
talk  of  together ;  what  they  would  be  ashamed  of 
would  be  ignoring  that  sexual  life  is  beginning  for 
him.  They  do  not  usually  choose  his  first  mistress 
for  him,  but  French  bourgeois  parental  care  has  been 
known  to  go  as  far  as  that.  Fathers  have  put  their 
boys  in  the  way  of  likely  ladies  whom  older  experience 
can  judge  to  be  satisfactory  and  safe,  and  the  fathers 
would  be  amazed  to  be  told  they  were  immoral. 
Should  boys  be  virgin  when  they  marry  ?  Possibly, 
but  are  they?  If  not,  is  it  not  a  father's  duty  to 
guide  them  as  far  as  may  be  in  all  things  of  Ufe, 
including  those  things  which  pretending  they  are  not 
will  not  do  away  with  ?  Is  it  not  even  a  mother's 
duty  to  teach  her  son  not  only  her  world  but  a  man's 
world  as  far  as  she  can  ?  The  idea  of  letting  on  to 
her  son  that  she  knows  the  man's  world  (if  she  should 
know  it)  shocks  the  average  English  mother ;  the 
French  calls  it  her  duty  to  teach  her  son  everything 
she  knows.  When  she  learns  that  he  has  a  mistress, 
she  will  contrive  to  see  the  mistress  discreetly  and 
critically,  and  when  she  has  seen  she  will  either  let 
him  understand  that  she  approves,  or  frankly  tell 
him  she  disapproves,  and  counsel  him  whatever 
course  she  thinks  right.     She  will  not  be  ashamed 

147 


THE   FRENCH   AND   THE   ENGLISH 

before  her  son  nor  he  before  her:  in  the  solidest 
French  famiUes,  cUnging  rehgiously  together  round 
their  homes,  mother  and  son  will  talk  to  one  another, 
the  one  guiding  and  the  other  confiding,  about  things 
the  mere  mention  of  which  in  some  much  less  solid 
English  average  homes  would  be  called  blaspheming 
against  home.  This  frankness  in  life,  this  care  in 
planning  life  come  from  the  great  French  faith  in 
life ;  it  is  the  only  really  essential  faith  French 
averages  hold  to.  The  only  thing  that  really  matters 
to  them  is  that  they  and  their  children  shall  live  as 
completely  well  as  the  former  can  and  the  latter  may 
be  taught  to.  *'  When  the  question  is  how  best  to 
arrange  my  son's  life,  shame,  scruples,  convention, 
are  not  worth  a  pin,"  says  the  French  bourgeois 
father.  To  a  younger  French  bourgeois  mother 
with  children  of  3  and  5,  calling  on  her  At  Home 
day,  an  elder  French  bourgeois  mother  said,  "  You 
do  well  to  keep  up  your  social  connections  for  the 
sake  of  your  son's  and  daughter's  futures."  She 
would  have  been  surprised  to  have  been  told  that 
what  she  said  would  have  surprised  an  English 
mother,  and  even  seemed  to  her  comic.  Humour? 
Shame  ?  Sliyness  ?  Proprieties  ?  Good  form  ?  Bad 
taste  ?  What,  in  the  name  of  "  the  family,"  can  all 
these  weigh  in  the  balance  with  faith  in  life,  when 
the  lives  are  those  of  our  own  flesh  and  blood  ? 

"In  reality,  life  across  tlie  Channel  is  as  ordered 
and  as  earnest  as  it  is  in  England,"  a  reviewer  kindly 

148 


1 


AVERAGES 

said  I  had  proved  in  an  earlier  volume.  The  average 
life  "  across  the  Channel "  is  more  earnest  and  much 
more  ordered  than  in  England.  England,  not 
France,  is  the  land  of  shifting  middle  social  layers. 
In  England,  not  in  France,  families  shoot  up  and 
drop  down.  The  sons  of  a  man  who  climbed  without 
an  aitch  are  comfortably  educated  at  universities ;  the 
sons  of  a  man  who  was  at  the  top  of  his  profession 
are  sent  to  the  Council  School  by  his  beggared 
widow.  The  scion  of  a  popular  patent  medicine 
might  have  a  century  of  culture  behind  him ;  the 
heir  to  several  centuries  of  culture  makes  a  living  by 
blackmail.  These  things  are  not  as  probable  in 
France.  The  material  ordering  of  French  Ufe  is 
much  firmer.  Every  day,  in  England,  a  business 
man  who  spent  his  several  thousands  a  year  on  him- 
self, wife,  and  children  dies  leaving  them  as  much  to 
live  upon  as  paid  for  his  cellar  while  he  lived ;  every 
day  a  professional  man  who  threw  his  money  about, 
and  with  it  got  out  of  life  as  much  for  him  and  his 
as  he  could,  dies  leaving  his  family  without  enough 
to  pay  his  funeral— ^paupers  depending  upon  some 
professional  fund.  Such  things,  when  they  happen 
in  France,  are  scandals.  Who  in  England  dreams  of 
calling  them  scandalous  ?  If  a  father  be  so  improvi- 
dent, having  lived  well,  as  to  die  leaving  his  wife 
and  children  no  more  than  they  enjoyed  in  his  life- 
time, the  French  bourgeoisie  holds  him  up  as  an 
example   of  the   thorough   deterioration  of  modern 

149 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

morality.  If  he  died  leaving  them  nothing,  his 
acquaintances  could  not  be  got  to  beheve  that  he  did 
not  squander  his  earnings  on  a  career  of  secret  and 
shameful  vices.  In  the  French  bourgeoisie  it  is  con- 
sidered rash  to  live  up  to  one's  income,  if  it  be  a 
revenue  derived  from  capital.  To  put  by  nothing  or 
little  of  an  earned  income  is  called  a  crime.  The 
middle  layer  of  society  thus  does  not  shift.  Few 
fortunes  are  made,  much  fewer  lost.  At  a  certain 
level,  a  son  rarely  rises  above,  and  almost  never  falls 
below,  his  father.  Even  in  the  political  world  few 
successful  men  are  really  self-made.  In  the  business 
world,  while  families  seldom  decay,  men  make 
money  but  rise  only  slowly  by  it,  even  in  their  own 
surroundings,  where  they  will  still  be  parvenus 
among  business  families  of  superior  or  older  stand- 
ing. Out  of  their  world  they  cannot  rise  at  all. 
The  shopkeeper,  however  rich,  is  still  classed  below 
the  engineer,  and  he,  obviously,  cannot  get  a  title  to 
lift  him.  A  titled  grocer  French  society  has  never 
conceived  possible,  were  the  Third  Republic  to  grant 
titles ;  and  no  grocer  in  France  has  ever  reached  such 
a  position  as  would  get  him  a  title  if  he  were  in 
England.  On  the  other  hand,  the  real  French  aris- 
tocracy (the  multitude  of  adventurers  with  sham 
titles  being  left  out)  does  drop  a  rotten  branch  occa- 
sionally ;  the  bourgeoisie  remains  the  solidest  and 
steadiest  in  Europe. 

Not  only  the  material  but  the  mental  middle  life 

150 


AVERAGES 

of  France  is  solider  ;  that  is  the  French  secret.  The 
French  average  is  surer  of  life  than  the  Enghsh — is 
completely  sure  of  life.  No  doubts  here ;  no  silly 
season  "  Is  life  worth  living  ?  "  for  not  one  newspaper 
reader  but  would  have  shrugged  his  shoulders,  "  Is 
my  paper  mad  ?  I  will  subscribe  to  its  rival "  ;  no 
question  about  the  value  of  life,  no  hesitation  about 
the  interest  of  Ufe,  no  qualms  about  the  sense  of  life. 
Of  course  life  is  "  worth  living."  To  ask  whether  it 
be  is  an  idiotic  question.  The  English  average  could 
ask  itself  the  question  ingenuously,  and  not  at  first 
see  that  the  question  is  nonsense,  as  the  French 
would  have  seen  instantly.  Of  course  life  has  value 
and  interest  and  sense.  Even  if  it  had  not,  what's 
the  odds  ? — it  is  life.  The  French  average  starts 
from  life  whithersoever  it  go  ;  comes  back  to  life 
wherever  it  came  from ;  knows  and  conceives  no 
other  beginning  and  no  other  goal ;  posits  life  as  the 
first  premiss  of  every  argument.  It  cannot  itself 
understand  the  absolute  value  which  it  attaches  to 
life,  knowing  no  other  estimate.  It  reasons  about 
life — none  more  sensibly;  but  it  cannot  completely 
understand  how  deep  its  own  religion  of  Hfe  is,  how 
every  day  its  one  motive  is  the  wish  to  make  for  itself 
and  for  its  flesh  and  blood  absolutely  as  much  out  of 
life  as  it  can.  Its  thrift,  orderliness,  sagacity,  intelli- 
gence, vivacity,  steadiness,  have  no  other  cause  :  the 
sum  total  which  the  man  and  his  children,  with  and 
after  him,  squeeze  out  of  life   must   be,  when   all 

151 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

additions  and  subtractions  are  made,  the  maximum 
that  Ufe  can  yield  him  and  them.  No  questions  of 
values  outside  life,  no  leisure  for  by-paths  in  life,  no 
time  for  dreams.  Life  is  too  real.  Hasten  to  gather 
and  eat  its  fruit ;  there  is  so  much  that  you  will  not 
have  time  to  eat  all.  Stop  to  watch  the  sun-spots  on 
the  leaves,  and  the  fruit  will  rot  and  drop,  and  you, 
when  you  drop  like  the  fruits  of  the  tree,  will  not 
have  eaten  your  fill.  French  averages  are  the  most 
ruthless  reahsts  in  the  world ;  they  have  sharpened 
their  wits  much  more  than  our  averages  have,  solely 
that  they  might  be  the  more  intelligent  realists,  and 
therefore  the  more  successful  realists. 

We  are  not,  even  the  pillars  of  our  society  are  not, 
realists.  "  As  soHd  as  the  EngUsh  middle- classes  ! " 
Perhaps  none  are  less  solid.  Dullness  is  not  solidity, 
money  is  not  solidity,  solidity  is  in  the  mind.  The 
solid  average  is  the  average  that  is  sure  of  its  place 
among  facts  and  among  ideas ;  to  be  sin-e  of  the 
former  only  is  insecurity.  The  English  average  is 
not  even  sure  of  the  former.  The  man  knows  that 
he  is  prosperous,  the  class  does  not  know  that  it  is  ; 
even  the  rich  and  secure  man  is  surrounded  by  shift- 
ing sands  where  relations  and  acquaintances  stand 
unsteadily.  In  France,  when  he  belongs  to  the  solid 
averages,  all  connected  and  acquainted  with  him  are 
as  solid  as  he ;  he  has  not  one  poor  relation  for  half 
a  dozen  he  would  have  in  England,  and  the  dull 
country  cousins  he  tries  to  run  away  from  are  usually 

152 


AVERAGES 

better  off  than  he.  But  money  alone,  even  money 
evenly  spread  through  a  class  and  down  generations, 
is  not  solidity.  Perhaps  a  class  might  almost  feel 
itself  solid  without  money ;  at  any  rate,  the  French 
bourgeoisie  feels  itself  much  more  solid  with  rather 
less  money  than  the  English.  Does  any  class  feel 
itself  inwardly  as  insecure  as  the  latter  ?  The 
moment  the  English  average  thinks  it  is  lost ;  it 
lives  well  only  by  forbidding  itself  to  think.  The 
number  of  things  it  is  afraid  to  think  of  fills  almost 
all  the  world.  Questions  can  be  put  to  it  all  day 
from  each  of  which  it  turns  away  in  terror.  A 
blushful  silence  is  the  answer,  which  means,  "  I  have 
always  held  it  right  not  to  consider  the  question." 
Its  extraordinary  mobility  really  is  flying  away  from 
questions.  Is  my  life  interesting?  Dash  off  in  a 
motor.  What  is  death  ?  Rush  off  for  a  week-end 
of  golf.  Do  the  politics  of  my  party  really  mean 
anything  ?  Catch  the  night  train  for  the  Swiss 
winter  sports.  Is  sex  of  any  importance?  Go 
salmon-fishing  in  Norway. 

One  is  often  amazed  by  the  average  English 
ability  not  to  think,  by  thought-tight  compartments 
in  a  walled-up  mind,  by  a  mind  not  only  closed 
against  the  outside  but  shutting  off  one  question 
from  another  within.  But  these  fortifications  are  in 
part  measures  of  safety.  The  English  average's 
natural  capacity  for  not  thinking  is  strengthened  by 
the  fear  of  what  would  happen  if  it  thought.     What 

153 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

happens  to  it  when  it  does  think  it  cannot  itself 
understand  ;  its  own  thought  lays  incomprehensible 
traps  for  it.  It  cannot  think  safely,  it  does  not  hve 
better  when  it  thinks  more,  but  endangers  instead  of 
safeguarding  its  living  by  thinking :  one  inch  more 
thought  and  it  is  over  the  edge,  out  of  life  into 
dreams  :  it  dare  not  think  for  fear  of  dreaming,  and 
whenever  it  does  think  it  dreams :  one  step  and  it 
floats  in  "  fads  "  and  "  movements."  Every  English 
fad  has  been  fed  from  the  English  middle-classes, 
English  averages  have  made  English  cranks,  Enghsh 
fanaticism  has  come  out  of  English  solidity.  From 
the  Anti-Corn  I^aw  League  to  suifragettes,  from 
anti- vivisection  to  the  late  Pharos  Club,  no  "move- 
ment "  but  what  the  solidest  English  averages  formed 
or  reinforced  it.  The  Enghsh  averages  wall  them- 
selves up  thickly,  opaquely,  and  narrowly,  but  not 
so  solidly  that  one  brick  may  not  fall  out  and  let 
them  see  beyond.  "  Movements  "  are  puerile  dreams, 
but  they  are  dreams ;  the  fads  of  cranks  are  foolish, 
but  they  are  dreams.  The  English  averages  cannot 
think,  but  they  have  glimmers  of  dreams  ;  they  think 
less  than  children  about  life,  but  they  have  faint 
specks  of  fancy,  and  their  childish  "  crazes  "  are  tiny 
germs  of  something  beyond  life. 

The  French  bourgeoisie  is  both  more  intelligent 
and  more  solid  than  the  English.  While  it  knows 
more  about  the  ornaments,  thinks  more  about  the 
substance,  and  is  better  at  the  theory,  it  is  better 

154 


AVERAGES 

also  at  the  practice  of  life.  Its  more  intelligent 
theorising  about  life  not  only  does  not  hinder  but 
helps  its  living.  When  the  English  bourgeoisie  does 
think  it  thinks  away  from  life,  if  ever  it  theorise  it 
theorises  not  for  but  against  life.  In  order  to  live 
it  must  live  by  instinct ;  what  little  thinking  it  does 
is  dreaming,  and  it  lives  not  so  much  the  more  but 
so  much  the  less.  The  French  runs  no  such  risk ; 
the  more  it  thinks  the  better  it  lives.  It  has  never 
made  and  seldom  helped  to  make  a  "fad."  It 
builds  its  intellectual  walls  as  far  as,  but  exactly  on, 
the  horizon  of  life,  and  builds  them  so  well  that 
never  a  brick  falls  out ;  within  them  none  sees  more 
clearly,  but  it  does  not  see  beyond.  It  never  can 
think  further  than  it  lives,  however  much  it  may 
think :  the  English  can  if  it  think  enough.  The 
dull  English  average  is  nearer  the  brink  of  dreams 
than  the  bright  French.  Life  strictly  limits  the 
French  outlook ;  the  English  rarely  gets  to  the 
horizon  of  life,  but  once  in  a  blue  moon  it  peers 
beyond,  the  French  never.  Thus  one  may  say  that 
the  French  bourgeoisie  realises  a  finished  work  com- 
pared with  which  the  English  is  a  clumsy  makeshift, 
but  the  latter  has  vague  possibilities  not  found  in 
the  former.  What  dreaming  the  English  bourgeoisie 
does  is  futile,  and  the  averages  of  mankind  are  not 
the  place  for  dreaming :  if  you  dream  get  out  of 
them,  or  your  dreams  will  remain  useless.  The 
French   bourgeoisie   is  convinced   of  the  futility  of 

155 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

dreaming ;  the  English  is  also,  as  far  as  it  has 
thought  about  the  matter  which  the  French  has 
definitely  thought  out.  But  the  French  average  is 
consistent  and  thinks  but  cannot  dream,  whereas 
the  English  is  not  and  does  not  think  but  can 
dream,  however  dimly.  It  is  perhaps  worse  than 
useless  for  the  average  to  dream  while  he  remains 
what  he  is,  but  he  can  get  out  of  his  medium. 
Then  he  will  have  a  possession  with  him  which  he 
never  could  have  taken  with  him  out  of  the  corre- 
sponding French  medium.  If  you  want  to  be  a 
pillar  of  society,  by  all  means  be  a  French  one  ;  you 
will  be  a  solider,  better-shaped,  better-finished-ofF 
and  more  ornate  one  in  a  more  coherent  whole. 
But  if  you  feel  as  if  you  might  be  a  poet,  come  out 
of  the  English  not  the  French  middle  strata ;  you 
will  bring  with  you  out  of  them  something  you 
never  would  have  brought  from  the  latter,  some 
small  faint  unearthliness. 


150 


CKANKS 


IX 

CRANKS 

The  word  is  ours,  the  thing  is  ours.  No  one  else  has 
the  word,  no  one  else  has  as  much  of  the  thing.  A 
real  word  is  made  only  for  a  real  thing,  is  called  up 
out  of  that  wonderful  storehouse  of  unborn  signs,  the 
imagination  of  a  people,  only  when  a  real  thing  calls 
it.  No  real  word  can  naturally  mean  a  false  thing ; 
it  may  be  forced  into  a  false  meaning,  it  always  has  a 
true  one.  Words  fabricated  in  workshops,  literary, 
scientific,  artistic,  philosophic  workshops,  may  mean 
real  things,  but  always  also  mean  false  ones.  Of 
themselves  they  are  false ;  they  become  true  only  by 
knocking  about  in  the  world  of  real  words.  They  are 
false  when  they  come  out  of  the  workshops,  those 
called  up  out  of  the  treasure  of  unborn  popular 
symbols  are  born  true.  No  essentially  truer  words 
can  exist  than  real  slang  words.  Sham  slang,  the 
clipped  jabber  of  a  season,  is  almost  as  untrue  as  the 
ready-made  tongue  of  word-coining  workshops.  Real 
slang  must  be  true ;  if  it  sounds  false  to  us,  we  have 
lost  its  truth.  If  we  want  to  find  out  the  true  things 
in  a  people  we  can  go  to  its  slang.     The  French  took 

159 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

a  German  word  (it  is  supposed)  and  made  chic  of  it, 
and  few  things  are  more  essentially  French  than 
chic;  the  French  themselves  scarcely  understand 
how  essentially  French  it  is.  They  apply  it  to  their 
clothes,  their  manners,  pejoratively  to  their  painting ; 
they  should  apply  it  also  to  their  minds,  to  their 
metaphysics,  to  their  perception  of  the  universe. 
Nothing  expresses  one  side  of  the  United  States 
better  than  bully.  Those  two  perfect  words  mug 
and  poire  prove  the  intellectual  aristocracy  of  the 
common  peoples  of  France  and  England,  their  right 
and  beautiful  contempt  for  fools ;  the  two  peoples 
which  invented  two  such  final  words  instinctively  felt 
that  they  are,  all  things  considered,  the  two  naturally 
most  intelligent  peoples  of  modern  times.  Enghsh 
oaths  and  English  obscenity  are  the  strongest  in  the 
world,  and  it  is  regrettable  that  the  custom  of  the 
day  should  forbid  it  being  demonstrated  that  they  are 
among  the  surest  signs  of  the  vitality  of  our  people. 
About  an  English  pal  there  is  something  that  no 
other  speech  can  say  because  no  other  people  has 
wanted  exactly  to  say  it ;  though  less  good,  to  be 
pally  is  still  exquisite  English,  and  a  fine  English 
thing.  This  is  not  the  fancy  of  a  blind  patriotism. 
One  need  not  be  a  Frenchman  to  recognise  at  once, 
for  instance,  that  the  French  have  not  only  la  blague 
but  Ic  panache  and  quelqucchose  dans  le  ventre,  and 
that  we  cannot  say  these  things  so  well  because  we 
have  not  wanted  so   keenly  to   say  them,  just   as, 

IGO 


CRANKS 

again,   only   an    Englishman    can    really   have    the 
hump. 

The  word  crank  is  ours  because  the  thing  is  ours. 
No  other  people  has  the  word  because  none  has  the 
real  thing.     This  is  a  distinction  of  which  we  may  be 
justly  proud,  though  we  are  very  modest  about  it 
and  even  deplore  it.     To  be  called  a  crank  in  England 
damns  your  man,  whereas  it  should  be  the  making 
of  him.      There  is  more  denunciation  of  cranks  in 
England  than  in  any  other  country,  and  this  is  not 
only  because  there  are  more  cranks,  but  also  because 
the  sane  people  have  more  aggressive  bursts  of  sanity. 
The  mildest  persons  break  into  such  fits  of  fury  against 
socialism  as  almost  never  attack  persons  of  equivalent 
sanity  in  other  countries.     When  the  British  people 
discovered  Socialism  at  the  General  Election  of  1906, 
its  bursts  of  sanity  were  very  violent.      The   most 
humane  old  ladies  became  virulent  when  one  men- 
tioned that  one  had  passed  through  Hyde  Park  on  a 
Sunday  and  stopped  to  listen  at  the  Marble  Arch, 
and  men  who  took  a  personal  pride  in  the  liberty  of 
the  subject  cried  out  almost  to  apoplexy  for  some 
such  strong  arm  as  that  of  the  Berlin  police  to  put 
down  the  nuisance  of  unemployed  processions  which 
no  other  people  would  be  "  such  fools  as  to  put  up 
with  for  five  minutes."     Yet  it  is  precisely  the  sane 
who  invented  the  word  crank,  which  in  itself  was  a 
beautiful  tribute  to  the  mad. 

That  the  English  sane  call  the  mad  cranks  proves 

161  M 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

a  sub-conscious  appreciation  of  the  latter.  The  sane 
French  have  never  troubled  to  find  a  word  for  their 
mad,  probably  never  considering  them  worth  it ; 
fumistes^  farceurs^  are  fundamentally  sane  people 
who  feign  in  various  ways,  either  for  the  joke  of  the 
thing  or  for  the  very  sane  purpose  of  tricking  some- 
body else.  If  a  Frenchman  meets  a  crank  he  can 
say  only,  cest  un  fou.  We  can  call  him  many  things, 
can  talk  of  fads,  hobbies,  axes  to  grind,  bees  in  the 
bonnet,  make  up  words  like  faddist,  faddy,  cranky. 
Beside  these,  vianies,  lubies,  idee  fixe,  even  a  "  spider 
in  the  ceiling,"  even  marteau,  maboule,  loufoque,  con- 
tain in  their  meaning  a  certain  element  of  genial 
human  sanity ;  to  be  marteau  sounds  to  the  English 
ear  forcible,  and  even  seems  to  have  some  kinship 
with  crankiness.  But  to  the  Frenchman  it  means 
only  a  soft,  pleasant,  harmless  dottiness ;  none  of 
these  French  words  have  the  definite  completeness 
of  the  English  words,  which  sound  like  Mr.  Podsnap 
"  brushing  aside." 

One  meets  mad  countrymen  in  many  parts  of 
Europe.  In  a  boat  bound  for  Greece  the  Captain 
at  dinner  told  us  passengers  we  would  pass  near 
Missolonghi.  "  What's  the  show  there  ? "  asked  the 
cultivated  young  Englishman.  "  Byron's  grave." 
"  Rot."  "  Byron  died  and  was  buried  there.  Greek 
War  of  Independence,  you  know,  after  swimming 
the  Hellespont."  "  Oh  !  did  he  ?  There  is  the  Daily 
Mail  with  the  latest  cricket,"  and  he  and  a  pal  were 

162 


CRANKS 

buried  in  scores,  not  apparently  having  ever  heard  of 
Byron.  Over  Ronceveaux  pass  the  diligence  draws 
up  through  a  swarm  of  goats  and  pigs  at  a  small  and 
squalid  Spanish  inn  with  a  dining-room  like  a  kitchen 
and  fearful  bedrooms.  At  dinner,  where  I  was  late, 
Don  Quixote,  with  straggling  grey  hair,  pointed  white 
beard,  flying  moustachios  and  flashing  eyes,  and  wear- 
ing the  rags  of  a  frock  coat,  got  up  from  the  head 
of  the  table,  bowed  and  greeted  me  in  Spanish  with 
Spanish  grandeur.  The  next  morning  he  was  dis- 
covered to  be  an  Englishman.  When  he  found  I 
was  one  he  suddenly  stopped  talking,  not  having 
been  introduced.  Otherwise,  he  had  become  more 
Spanish  than  the  Spaniards.  He  walked  back  over 
the  pass  into  France,  a  Don  Quixote  with  a  hammer 
(he  was  a  geologist  and  contributed  to  the  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica),  tapping  all  the  stones  on  the  way 
as  he  went.  In  a  train  to  Doncaster  on  St.  Leger 
eve,  two  clean  and  beautiful  young  Guardsmen  with 
two  too-much-dressed  ladies  got  in.  One  of  the  men 
began  to  chant,  "  Roll  'em  up,  roll  'em  up,  roll  'em 
up."  Twice  in  two  hours  he  cursed  the  War  Office. 
The  rest  of  the  time  he  softly  sang,  *'  Roll  'em  up," 
except  when  he  dozed  off  for  a  second.  He  woke  and 
sang,  "  Roll  'em  up."  Nothing  else  had  been  said  by 
anybody  to  anybody  when  we  got  to  Doncaster.  At 
Toulon  a  British  Squadron  was  inaugurating  the 
entente  cordiale.  Blond  young  sub -lieutenants  with 
girls'  faces  learned  to  know  life  in  the  "  tolerated  " 

103 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

houses  of  Toulon,  and  in  after  sports  terrified  swarthy, 
brawny,  Southern  sailors  by  the  energy  of  their  riot- 
ing.   One  of  them  left  and  rejoined  his  ship  nightly 
by  being  shot  out  or  shot  in  through  a  porthole  into 
or  from  a  fisherman's  boat.     On  shore  he  tore  up  and 
do^vn   the   town   in  and  out  of  bars   and   brothels. 
Nothing  went  to  his  head,  nothing  cast  ^him  down, 
he  never  said  anything  to  anybody  but  "  mouldy." 
"  Good  time  ?  "  "  Mouldy."   "  Have  a  drink  ?  "  ''  Yes, 
Mouldy."    "  Fine  girl  ? "  "  Mouldy."    "  Good  ship  ? " 
"  Mouldy,"  and  he  shot  himself  into  the  good  ship's 
side  from  the  porthole  with  a  **  Good  mouldy  night " 
from  the  boat  in  which  we  had  gone  with  him  along- 
side.   The  squadron  sailed  and  he  waved,  shouting, 
"  So  long,  old  chap,  had  a  mouldy  time."    I  wish  I 
could   meet  this   son   of  English   earth   again.     In 
Normandy  at  the  seaside  a  Shropshire   Vicar   with 
thirteen  daughters  (two  different  ones  came  with  him 
yearly)  was  engaged  from  some  headquarters  in  the 
City  of  London   to   preach   the   gospel  on   August 
Sundays  at  the  Hotel  des  Bains.     He  taught  English 
to  the  boy  of  an  amiable  Frenchman,  but  he  preferred 
converting  the  father.     "  God  touches  me,"  he  told 
him  slowly,  articulating  the  words  well.    The  amiable 
Frenchman   had   no  doubt   of  it  whatever.     Every 
morning  on  the  beach  he  told  him,  "  God  touches 
me,"  and  the  Frenchman  always  amiably  acquiesced. 
He  drove  away  on  the  top  of  the  old  coach  waving  to 
the  amiable  Frenchman,  with  whom   he  had  left  a 

1G4 


CRANKS 

stock  of  tracts.  At  Dijon  in  the  hotel  were  a  clergy- 
man who  seemed  to  have  been  flattened  in  the  door- 
way and  his  thick,  square  wife,  with  tightly  drawn 
thin  hair.  Neither  ever  said  a  word  to  the  other. 
The  husband  twitched  sometimes,  and  the  wife  looked 
slowly  down  at  him,  but  neither  ever  spoke.  At 
Dijon  also  in  the  same  hotel  were  two  old  maid 
sisters  who  never  went  out,  always  read  London  Six- 
penny Magazines  and  always  put  on  black  silk  dresses, 
showers  of  brown  ringlets  and  sets  of  bangles  for 
dinner.  No  one  knows  what  these  were  doing  at 
Dijon.  No  one  knows  what  great  numbers  of 
English  men  and  women  are  doing  in  every  little 
corner  of  Europe.  They  worm  their  way  every- 
where, hardly  a  square  mile  of  the  world  but  some 
"  mad  Englishman "  (as  other  people  say)  has  done 
some  mad  thing  there.  They  worm  their  way,  more 
adaptable  rally  (the  general  opinion  to  the  contrary 
is  strangely  wrong)  than  any  other  peoples,  yet 
always  EngUsh  still  at  the  core.  The  wander-fever 
of  us  all  from  stockbrokers  to  artists  is  one  of  the 
touches  of  madness  in  us,  and  a  dash  of  poetry  too. 

Many  of  our  mad  countrymen  are  not  called 
cranks  at  all.  In  fact  they  call  others  cranks  and 
themselves  sane.  But  there  is  a  soul  of  crankiness  in 
them,  and  it  is  perhaps  a  touch  of  this  that  makes  us 
all  kin.  The  sane  who  talk  vehemently  of  cranks 
have  it ;  undoubtedly  we  who  talk  of  our  mad 
countrymen  have  it  too ;  that  we  all  have  it  makes 

165 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

us  a  great  people.  The  mad  countrymen  one  has 
met  looked  upon  themselves  as  the  standard  of 
sanity ;  had  they  a  suspicion  of  themselves  they 
would  be  spoilt.  They  are  whole  and  perfect  because 
in  themselves  they  see  no  gap  or  flaw,  and  they  see 
none  because  it  never  occurs  to  them  to  look  for  any. 
While  they  do  not  pick  holes  in  themselves  they  also 
do  not  place  themselves  :  they  have  no  idea  of  their 
own  significance,  they  do  not  know  what  they  stand 
for,  they  have  never  considered  that  they  could  mean 
anything  and  would  be  amazed  to  be  called  types. 
They  are,  indeed,  only  a  few  fragmentary  and  faint 
types  out  of  the  many  which  ought  to  be  drawn 
completely  with  a  firm  line. 

The  vacuous  young  Englishman  is  an  ornament 
of  our  race  hitherto  ill-prized.  We  are  not  as  proud 
of  him  as  we  should  be.  He  is  worth  a  great  deal  to 
us  because  he  unites  vitality  with  vacuity.  The 
blanks  of  other  peoples  are  blanks  because  with  them 
life  runs  at  a  low  ebb.  He  is  at  once  full  of  life  and 
empty  of  everything  else.  In  him  alone  is  found  the 
pure  vital  element ;  in  others,  it  runs  to  combinations, 
mixes  with  literature,  art,  politics,  the  complicated 
games  of  sex,  the  science  of  getting  on.  Only  he 
disturbs  his  vitality  with  none  of  these  compounds, 
but  keeps  it  virgin.  When  life  runs  strong  in  others 
it  must  catch  on  more  or  less  to  the  riddles  or  the 
follies  of  the  world.  He  ignores  these  and  merely 
lives    strongly.     Literature  and    art    obviously  can 

166 


CRANKS 

secure  no  hold  upon  him  ;  his  poHties  are  whatever 
rut  he  was  brought  up  to  follow  and  are  not  even 
a  sport ;  the  games  of  sex,  the  pleasant  and  intricate 
pastimes     of    intrigue,    the    agreeable    amusements 
wrapped  ornamentally  round  an  instinct  are  played 
at  fairly  well  in  England,  but  it  is  not  he  who  plays 
at  them ;  ambition,  of  course,  is  foreign  to  him  and 
he  cannot  know  what  getting  on  means.     He  does 
not  know  anything  at  all,  he  does  not  even  know 
that  he  lives,  but  he  does  live.     That  he  lives  is  the 
only  interest  he  can  possess  for  us,  but  it  is  a  great 
one.      He    is  probably   unique  among   mankind   in 
being  a  piece  of  vitality  and  nothing  else.     In  every 
other  people  such  vitality  could  not  remain  untouched 
by  the  world  ;  it  would  have  to  do  or  be  something, 
to  fight  duels,  to  enlist,  to   scheme  in  poUtics,  to 
capture  mistresses.     That  is  why  he  finds  no  com- 
panions in  other  nations ;  the  vacuous  young  EngUsh- 
man,  empty  of  everything  but  life,  makes  no  foreign 
friends.     The   acquaintances    abroad   whose   vitality 
attracts  him  repel  him  because  they  always  betray  an 
interest  in  some  Uttle  corner  of  human  activity,  and 
he  takes  no  interest  in  any.     In  those  to  whom  the 
universe  is  an  entire  blank,  as  it  is  to  him,  he  finds 
this  mental  state  to  be  due  to  weakness  and  sluggish 
blood,  and  they  are  not  alive  enough  for  him.     The 
former   are   *' always  rotting  about   something,"  the 
latter  are   "worms."     He  unites   complete  vacuity 
with  fine  vitaUty.     He  neither  is  nor  does  anything 

167 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

else.  But  he  (Mr.  Henry  James  would  say)  beauti- 
fully lives.  Watch  him:  he  travels  through  the 
same  human  things  impervious  to  any,  he  repeats  the 
same  dozen  and  a  half  words  of  the  day's  slang,  he 
echoes  the  three  ideas  he  sucked  in  with  his  mother's 
milk,  he  treads  on  everybody's  corns  and  never  knows 
it,  he  makes  an  ass  of  himself  whenever  he  says 
anything  at  all,  he  is  as  dead  to  impressions  as  a 
brick  wall  and  ought  to  make  one  ashamed  of  one's 
people,  one's  birth  and  one's  upbringing — and  he  is 
charming.  The  vacuous  young  man  of  France  or 
Germany  or  Italy  is  unbearable,  ours  has  a  great 
charm.  I  have  watched  him  often  and  have  been 
delighted  when  he  made  an  ass  of  himself,  not  in  the 
least  out  of  Schadenfreude,  but  because  he  did  it  so 
charmingly.  Other  nations  also  feel  his  charm. 
When  you  are  told  by  a  French  lady  (pointing  out 
two  fearful  bounders  of  your  race  in  a  Paris  cafe)  how 
distinguished  all  Englishmen  are,  her  mistake  is 
merely  a  wrong  inference ;  she  takes  the  two 
bounders  to  be  replicas  of  the  vacuous  young 
Englishmen  she  met,  whose  mental^equipment  was  a 
child's  compared  with  hers,  whom  she  made  eyes  at 
and  who  is  perhaps  still  wondering  what  she  meant, 
but  whom  she  found  (she  could  not  help  herself)  and 
remembers  as  charming.  His  clothes,  his  cleanliness, 
his  shy  freshness,  his  clear  speech,  his  simple  manners 
have  all  something  to  do  with  this  charm  of  his,  but 
they  are  not  enough  to  explain  it ;  essentially  it  can 

168 


CRANKS 

come  only  from  the  fresh  spring  of  life  in  him.  Why 
does  he  do  nothing  with  his  vitality  ?  That  is  a 
mystery  of  the  English  people.  Perhaps  if  he  did  he 
might  spoil  it.  Let  us  take  him  as  he  is  and  rejoice 
in  him,  absurd  and  delightful.  Our  public  schools 
and  universities  turn  out  several  hundreds  of  him 
every  year  and  an  ungrateful  nation  pays  no  heed. 
It  is  one  more  example  of  our  ignoring  our  own 
virtues.  Our  vacuous  and  charming  young  country- 
men need  not  be  encouraged  to  multiply  infinitely, 
but  we  must  take  care  the  species  never  dies  out. 
He  is  much  better  worth  preserving,  just  like  any 
luxury  such  as  partridges,  than  our  strenuous  youth. 
The  latter  seldom  succeeds  in  being  as  strenuous  as 
the  youth  of  other  nations.  In  our  young  man  who 
combines  vacuity  with  vitality  is  found  a  fine  accident 
of  human  growth  which  occurs  in  no  other  nation. 

Thus  soUd  England  yields  cranks,  some  of  the 
best.  The  vacuous  and  live  young  Englishman 
grows  up  into  a  pillar  of  society.  He  preserves  the 
same  vitality  and  the  same  blankness.  Of  course, 
neither  he  nor  his,  who  are  all  pillars  of  society,  are 
cranks  at  all,  and  they  all  would  be  offended  to  be  called 
so.  But  calling  them  so  is  paying  them  (if  they  only 
knew  it)  the  compliment  of  detecting  the  trace  of 
poetry  in  them.  What  is  interesting  in  the  sanest 
English  people  is  the  tinge  of  madness.  Their  im- 
perturbable stoUdity  is  of  the  essence  of  dreams.  They 
"  always  make  up  an  idea  of  the  world  for  themselves 

169 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

and  pretend  it  is  true,"  said  a  French  realist.  The 
stolid  walkers  through  life  thus  turn  out  to  be  the 
dreamers :  the  more  impressionable  wanderers  in  and 
out  of  the  by-paths  of  life  are  the  realists,  not  the 
dreamers.  The  dream  of  the  stoUd  is  a  dull  one,  and 
they  do  not  understand  it  themselves,  but  it  is  what 
makes  them  interesting. 

In  his  admirable  description  of  one  species  of  what 
I  should  call  the  genus  of  the  crank  political,  Altiora 
Bailey  in  the  "  New  Machiavelli,"  Mr.  Wells  omits, 
not,  I  think,  intentionally,  to  note  that  the  species,  as 
the  genus,  is  exclusively  indigenous  to  English  soil. 
If  he  had  noted  that  he  would,  I  think,  have  enjoyed 
his  description  more.  The  boating  party,  drawn  with 
three  or  four  touches,  is  delicious.  Altiora's  whiskey 
and  soda  and  lemonade  dinner-parties  are  excellent ; 
Altiora  on  sexual  relations  is  perfect,  but  the  novehst's 
hero  does  not  enjoy  describing  Altiora.  To  take  a 
real  delight  in  her  and  others  of  her  genus  is  for  us 
a  patriotic  duty.  When  we  understand  that  the 
Altioras  are  among  the  most  exclusively  English 
things  in  England  we  do  not  write  one  whit  crossly 
about  them.  They  exist  absolutely  nowhere  else ; 
had  they  no  other  they  would  have,  at  least,  that 
quality.  What  would  happen  to  an  Altiora  trans- 
planted anywhere  else?  She  might  go  on  growing 
in  American  soil,  but  she  would  not  flourish,  for  her 
chief  flower  would  have  withered ;  she  would  no 
longer  then  be  politically  constructive.     What  would 

170 


CRANKS 

she  be  in  Russia  ?  A  bundle  of  nerves.  In  Germany  ? 
A  frump.  Try  to  imagine  her  transplanted  to  France 
— try  and  fail.  An  Unified  Socialist's  wife,  she  would 
give  nice  little  dinners  with  good  wines,  one  or  two 
fine  liqueurs  and  smart  talk,  to  show  that  in  the 
historic  words  of  her  husband  :  "  Socialists  do  not 
pretend  to  be  ascetics,"  or  she  would  be  soured  by 
piety  and  pray  for  his  soul.  A  Socialist-Radical's 
wife,  she  would  have  generations  of  prosperous,  solid 
bourgeoisie  behind  her,  and  know  it  and  show  it ;  she 
would  be  the  sheet-anchor  of  the  ship  and  her  fat 
husband  the  mainsail,  gay  in  the  political  breezes.  A 
Radical  Permanent  Under-Secretary's  wife,  she  would 
either  play  the  gay  duchess  or  give  it  up  and  stay  at 
home  to  mind  the  children,  dining  at  the  restaurant 
with  the  Under-Secretary  on  Saturdays  before  an 
evening  at  the  Opera  Comique  or  the  Varietes. 

The  whole  of  Altiora,  herself,  her  husband  and 
her  house,  is  solely  and]  beautifully  Enghsh,  and  not 
only  she  but  all  her  genus  which  her  creator  might 
have  described  with  her.  The  Anarchist  parson,  the 
pagan  poet,  the  ladies  who  will  not  live  a  lie  are 
solely  and  beautifully  English  also.  They  drink 
black  coffee  instead  of  whiskey  and  soda.  They  are 
not  politically  constructive  only,  but  philosophically 
critical.  They  look  life  in  the  face,  it  does  not  make 
them  afraid,  the  lushest  things  of  it  find  them  ready. 
The  damned  anaemia  of  England  fills  them  with  fierce 
and  riotous  fury.     The  warm  blood,  the  Uthe  Hmbs, 

171 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

the  rich  senses,  don't  they  mean  as  much  as  pale 
poHcies  and  the  dry  bones  of  blue  books  ?  An 
Anarchist  parson,  in  a  tweed  suit  and  flannel  shirt, 
explains  that  real  Christianity  is  not  bloodless,  but  the 
most  tremendous  and  fullest  religion  of  the  joy  of 
living.  The  gargoyles  of  cathedrals  throb  with  it, 
the  gospels  preach  the  gospel  of  the  great  faith  in  the 
flesh.  Paganism  was  the  stifling  asceticism,  Christi- 
anity hallows  the  body.  The  pagan  poet,  who  eats 
exquisitely  every  day  in  Wardour  Street  French 
restaurants,  where  he  reads  his  poems  to  a  few  over 
a  glass  of  wonderful  Pommard  from  round  the  corner, 
differs  violently  from  the  Anarchist  parson  and  they 
argue  passionately  for  the  rest  of  the  evening.  The 
ladies  who  wont  live  lies  say  with  beautiful  English 
unblushing  innocence  such  things  as  the  French  call 
"enormous."  They  sit  on  the  floor,  curhng  up  their 
long  lank  legs  wrapped  in  clinging  green,  lay  their 
heads  on  the  lap  of  the  pagan  poet,  a  political  con- 
structor, a  Socialist  communist,  or  even  the  Anarchist 
parson,  smoke  cigarettes  and  say  the  enormous  things. 
One  of  them,  true  to  her  principle,  would  not  get 
married,  because  she  might  have  had  to  live  lies  with 
her  husband  after  a  time,  but  wanted  a  baby  by  some 
healthy  father,  brains  no  object,  as  she  supplied  them ; 
having  had  the  baby  she  wrote  a  poem  about  having 
it,  printed  the  poem  privately  and  sent  it  to  her 
friends  bound  in  a  brown  wrapper  paper  with  gold 
lettering.      Some  old   amused  women  with   money 

172 


CRANKS 

who  monopolise  one  or  two  peculiar  looking  young 
men,  a  white-haired  prophet  of  a  nut  diet  with  piping 
voice,  a  musician  who  has  discovered  M.  Claude 
Debussy,  a  painter  who  has  discovered  Cezanne  and 
believes  him  to  be  of  about  the  same  age  as  M. 
Henri-Matisse,  a  sub-editor  or  two  (it  is  Saturday 
night),  a  leader-writer  who  one  year  wrote  three 
columns  daily  about  Molly  Maguires(or  alternatively 
Little  Loafers)  make  up  the  party  ;  no  such  other 
could  be  found  outside  England. 

In  France  there  are  no  anarchist  pastors  or 
priests  :  the  nearest  approach  to  the  one  is  a  Lutheran 
clergyman  who  actually  plays  cards  (for  love)  on  a 
Sunday ;  to  the  other,  a  Roman  Catholic  priest  who 
was  a  Dreyfusard  and  confessed  himself  one  under 
the  secret  of  the  confession.  There  are  no  ladies  who 
do  not  want  to  live  lies,  except  those  who  live  truth- 
fully at  Montmartre,  or  assimilated  places.  The 
mistress  of  the  periodically  arrested  anarchist  (run  in 
whenever  a  crowned  head  is  announced  in  Paris) 
would  never  think  of  curling  up  by  the  fireplace  and 
resting  her  head  in  the  lap  of  a  pagan  poet.  The 
pagan  poet,  when  he  still  existed,  had  perfectly 
"  correct  "  manners,  flirted  just  to  the  right  limit  with 
the  jeune  Jille,  and  made  love  just  to  the  right  limit 
to  married  women.  The  lady  who  has  a  baby  by  an 
unknown  father  and  writes  a  poem  about  it  startles 
even  her  own  London  a  little :  anarchist  Paris  would 
dismiss  her  instantly  for  a  lunatic.    Most  of  the  other 

173 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

members  of  the  party  would  be  dismissed  for  lunatics. 
The  French  are  a  thousand  times  readier  than  we  are 
to  dismiss  people  for  lunatics.  They  are  extraordi- 
narily sane :  their  journalists  write  journalese,  and  do 
not  pretend  to  write  anything  else  ;  their  leader- 
writers  write  leaders,  and  do  not  pretend  to  write 
anything  else ;  their  sub-editors  sub-edit,  and  do  not 
pretend  to  think  about  anything  else.  They  have 
not  one  crank  to  our  dozen.  They  have  next  to  no 
suffragettes,  anti  -  vivisectionists,  Fabians,  pohtical 
constructivists,  non-conformists,  revivahsts,  Primitive 
Methodists,  anti-vaccinationists.  Christian  scientists, 
Salvationists,  Mormons — no  polygamists  on  rehgious 
principle,  at  any  rate — Baptists,  teetotallers  ;  no  no- 
hatters,  vegetarians,  theosophists,  unknown  tongues, 
Boy  Scouts,  Primrose  Leagues ;  and  one  can't 
imagine  them  having  any  Smilers  with  short  leggings, 
black  straw  helmets  and  banners,  announcing  Pillar- 
of-Fire  Gospel  Meetings. 

Their  first  and  deepest  collective  characteristic  is 
their  sense  of  reality ;  the  foremost  characteristic  in 
us,  as  a  people,  is  our  imagination.  We  may  have 
many  more  unimaginative  individuals  than  they  ;  the 
average  Frenchman  can  picture  a  thing  to  himself  in 
every-day  life  ten  times  quicker  than  the  average 
Englishman.  But  if  we  suppose  that  the  English 
and  French  peoples  are  two  persons,  what  an  observer 
will  first  mark  in  the  one  will  be  his  dreams,  in  the 
other  his  realism. 

174 


CRANKS 

Thus,  in  the  study  of  ourselves  we  should  note, 
not  ignore,  cranks,  because  they  are  our  imaginative- 
ness, or  a  great  part  of  it.  If  it  came  to  improving 
ourselves,  we  might  try  to  acquire  a  sense  of  reality, 
though  hard  and  rare.  Conversely,  the  French 
should  study,  not  ignore,  their  own  realism.  If  they 
wanted  to  teach  themselves  something,  they  might 
cultivate  imagination,  perhaps  an  easier  thing  for 
them  than  the  learning  of  reality  by  us.  They  have 
already  a  surface  imagination ;  we  have  only  a 
physical,  no  intellectual,  sense  of  reality.  We  are 
safe  realists  only  as  long  as  we  don't  think ;  and  we 
dream  the  moment  we  begin  to  think. 

The  French  think  many  a  wild  thing,  but  below 
it  all  Ues  faith  in  life.  They  can  have  few  or  no 
cranks,  because  for  the  real  crank  his  dream  is  his 
life.  For  the  Altioras,  the  facts  of  their  lives  exist 
less  than  their  schemes.  A  French  pagan  poet  could 
not  riot  in  a  Wardour  Street  restaurant.  Con- 
versely, to  almost  every  Frenchman  a  good  dinner 
always  remains  a  good  dinner.  We  forget  life  much 
more  easily.  The  ladies  who  will  not  Uve  lies,  the 
anarchist  parson,  the  idealist  sub-editors,  can  easily 
think,  in  olive-green  and  white  drawing-rooms,  with 
two  settees,  a  dozen  cushions,  and  black  coffee,  they 
are  tasting  life  to  the  full.  To  the  most  idealist 
Frenchman  black  coffee  is  black  coffee,  lanky  or  fat 
ladies  are  lanky  or  fat  ladies,  sex  is  sex,  as  a  good 
dinner  is  a  good  dinner. 

175 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

The  English  are  sincerer  towards  their  own  con- 
sciences ;  the  French  are  sincerer  towards  Ufe.  The 
English  honestly  try  to  live  their  dreams,  and  con- 
trive to  think  honestly  that  they  are  hving  them. 
The  French  are  dishonest  towards  their  ideas, 
because,  while  they  talk  about  them,  they  know  their 
ideas  are  not  realised,  if  realisable ;  but  they  are 
honest  towards  life,  because  they  always  remember 
life  as  a  background  to  all  the  patterns  dreams  draw 
upon  it.  The  English  are  dishonest  towards  Ufe, 
because,  honest  dreamers,  they  forget  life,  and  yet, 
after  all,  go  on  living. 

Think  of  parallel  cranks  in  France  and  in  England, 
men  and  women.  Madame  Marguerite  de  la  Tour  is 
"  advanced."  She  stands  for  freedom  and  "  libertar- 
ism."  She  stands,  above  all,  for  the  "  idea."  What- 
ever happens  she  is  for  Vide-e,  for  the  idea  in  everything. 
In  politics  she  is  an  anarchist,  because  Anarchism  is 
the  idea,  and  no  other  political  system  is  so  much  an 
idea.  She  is  majestic  when  she  denounces  all  other 
political  parties  because  some  contingency  taints  their 
idea.  In  art,  she  is  for  not  merely  liberty,  but  what 
is  more,  libertarism,  and  hails  or  damns  a  page  of 
prose,  a  sonnet,  a  sketch,  a  symphonic  poem,  as  it  has 
or  has  not  "  the  idea."  In  life  she  goes  wholly  by  the 
idea  ;  persons  who  live  by  it  are  noble,  those  who  don't 
are  filthy ;  this  one  conforms  to  the  idea  and  is  em- 
braced as  a  friend  to  the  cause,  that  other  has  not 
known   how   to   come   up   to   it,  and   is   gross   and 

17G 


CRANKS 

contemptible.  She  travels  about  stirring  up  strikes  for 
the  sake  of  the  idea,  taking  with  her  her  maid,  who 
being  her  equal  always  dines  at  table  with  her  and 
would  feel  much  more  comfortable  in  the  kitchen. 
Madame  Marguerite  de  la  Tour  is  the  daughter  of  a 
railway  engineer  and  shareholder,  and  has  about  £300 
a  year  of  her  own  in  railway  shares,  which  she  watches 
from  week  to  week,  and  she  makes  almost  £200  a 
year  more  by  articles  about  the  "  idea,"  more  or  less 
flavoured  for  the  public.  She  married  at  eighteen 
her  father's  Assistant  Sub-chief  of  Department,  who 
died.  She  was  a  widow  for  two  years  or  so,  then 
lived  for  two  years  with  a  literary  Anarchist,  who 
died  leaving  her  some  Suez  Canal  shares,  and  now 
she  thinks  of  marrying  a  well-thought-of  dealer  in 
chemical  dyes,  who  in  the  interval  shares  her  flat. 
She  gives  well-arranged  little  dinners,  for  which  she 
markets  herself  in  the  morning,  and  she  puts  carefully 
together  evening  parties  to  which  she  asks  the  Railway 
share-owners  as  well  as  the  Anarchists.  She  hovers 
between  the  two,  solid  life  flirting  with  the  idea. 

Mme.  Marguerite  de  la  Tour  has  a  son  apparently 
twenty-five,  who  sleeps  in  her  bedroom,  behind  a 
Japanese  screen.  She  thus  always  knows  at  what 
time  he  gets  to  bed.  Mme.  Marguerite  de  la  Tour 
has  a  wonderful  figure  or  a  wonderful  corset,  wonder- 
ful blond  hair,  almost  certainly  not  a  wig,  wears 
wonderful  clinging  clothes,  or  a  perfectly-cut  tailor 
made  when  stirring  up  strikers.     She  may  be  fifty, 

177  N 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

she  might  be  thirty-five.  She  knows  how  to  look  at 
a  man  that  he  may  think  she  looks  only  at  him,  she 
lights  up  her  drawing-room  with  her  own  self,  and 
everybody  there  feels  brilhant.  The  "idea"  never 
made  INIadame  Marguerite  de  la  Tour  forget  life. 

Mrs.  Winifred  Slaughter  is  first  of  all  practical. 
She  believes  in  ideas,  but  she  believes  in  realising 
them.  She  is  completely  devoted  to  the  cause,  but 
the  cause  must  be  advertised.  For  some  weeks  she 
padlocked  herself  to  Government  Building  raihngs. 
She  now  practices  only  intellectual  athletics,  and 
gives  debating  dinner-parties  which  are  like  prize 
fights.  The  education  of  one's  opponents,  who  are 
opponents  only  because  they  have  not  been  taught  to 
think  clearly,  is  the  only  royal  road  for  the  advance- 
ment of  the  cause,  whatever  the  cause.  Sparring, 
over  tepid  soup  and  an  entree  tasting  like  sawdust. 
The  boiled  leg  of  mutton  comes  on  and  one  adversary 
is  knocked  out.  Two  more  go  down  before  it  is  off. 
Over  the  sage  pudding  and  gooseberry  tart  Mrs. 
Winifred  Slaughter  polishes  off  all  her  opponents 
who  were  still  standing  up  to  her.  A  glass  of  ten- 
penny  claret,  Virginia  cigarettes,  she  lights  one ; 
"  Shows  my  age.  I'm  fifty-three.  In  my  young  days 
we  all  smoked."  Mrs.  Winifred  Slaughter  is  pink, 
fresh,  clear-eyed,  iron-grey  haired,  in  purple  satin ; 
she  has  muscle,  flesh,  bone,  lieight,  breadth,  lungs, 
and  can  say  more  words  more  clearly  and  more 
coherently  in  less  time  than  any  one  known.     Some 

178 


CRANKS 

of  her  opponents  are  reviving ;  she  drowns  them 
instantly  and  they  sink  with  one  gurgle.  Words  are 
nothing  she  concludes.  We  must  do,  not  talk,  and 
we  do  do  ;  never  since  man  was  born  of  woman  have 
women  come  to  as  much  as  now. 

Mrs.  Winifred  Slaughter  has  a  husband  with 
£10,000  a  year.  She  tells  you  that  she  gave  up 
sexuality  on  entering  her  thirty-fifth  year.  Up  to 
that  age  sex  is  excellent.  She  recommends  it  to 
every  one ;  no  one  should  be  without  it.  Sexuality 
is  one  of  the  best  instruments  of  the  cause,  but 
sexuality  must  be  educated,  and  she  sketches  a  plan 
of  sexual  education.  Mr.  Slaughter  has  long  since 
learned  to  listen  without  turning  a  hair.  Ethelred 
Slaughter,  just  down  from  Cambridge  (Mrs.  W.  S. 
knows  what  to  take  and  what  to  leave  in  a  Cambridge 
education),  has  not  yet  learned  not  to  squirm. 

Mrs.  Winifred  Slaughter  is  a  more  exciting  and 
jollier  person  to  meet  than  Madame  Marguerite  de  la 
Tour,  but  Mme.  Marguerite  is  pleasanter  to  dine 
with. 


179 


POETS 


X 

POETS 

The  English  are  a  nation  of  poets,  the  French  a 
nation  of  prosateurs ;  there  is  so  little  prose  essen- 
tially in  us  that  we  have  not  even  a  proper  word  for 
a  prosateur,  but  must,  if  naming  him  honourably, 
call  him  a  prose  writer,  as  if  one  could  only  write  in 
prose  and  not  also  think  and  be  in  prose,  and  that  all 
our  other  words  derived  from  prose  become  pejorative, 
as  if  one  could  not  honourably  and  honestly  think 
and  be  in  prose,  whereas  the  French  have  only  "  pro- 
saique  "  against  prosaic,  prosaist,  prosy,  proser.  The 
French  find  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of  in  prose,  we 
do  ;  why  should  a  bore  be  prosy  ?  they  would  ask  ; 
a  bore  in  verse  may  be  worse. 

The  Enghsh  are  poets  without  knowing  it,  as  M. 
Jourdain  spoke  prose  unawares.  Some  of  their 
humblest  traits  have  a  faint  poetry.  Enghsh  senti- 
mentalism  is  the  thickest  in  the  world  and  does  much 
damage,  yet  there  is  a  speck  of  poetry  in  it.  The 
callow  mind  that  will  not  have  real  and  rare  senti- 
ment and  prefers  it  cheap  and  false  does  at  all  events 
want  it.     The  tawdriest  sentimentahty  "  comes  from 

183 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

a  good  nature,"  as  the  French  say.  It  behes  its  own 
nature  and  defeats  its  own  end,  but  we  can;  still  trace 
its  descent.  British  sentimentality  is  in  practice  a 
worse  enemy  of  sentiment  than  cynicism  ;  it  is  shame- 
less, and  sentiment  needs  shame ;  it  kills  feeUngs  by 
exposure.  We,  the  shy  among  mankind,  get  one 
part  of  our  heart  printed  for  us  upon  our  sleeve  in 
long  primer  by  novels  and  plays,  especially  plays,  and 
never  wince ;  some  kinds  of  sentiment  we  tliink 
destined  rightly  to  be  made  a  motley  to  the  view, 
and  we  call  cynics  those  who  hide  them  beneath  fun 
and  prefer  a  "  Tom  Jones  "  joke  to  a  cheapened  feel- 
ing, we,  the  reserved,  call — for  it  comes  to  that — 
restraint  looseness. 

Yet  sentimentality  is  sentiment,  though  it  is  often 
hard  to  think  so  ;  only  it  is  sentiment  stunted  for 
lack  of  intelligence,  a  form  of  sentiment  very  common 
with  us.  It  kills  sentiment  more  truly  than  cyni- 
cism can  in  the  average  mind,  because  unfeeling 
intelligence  may  with  less  difficulty  learn  to  feel 
than  unintelligent  feeling  to  understand,  sentiment 
being  inseparable  from  feeling  and  understanding. 
But  it  is  ,of  the  same  nature  as  sentiment  all  the 
same.  It  is  what  makes  poets  of  our  averages  ;  some 
of  us  might  be  willing  to  give  much  such  poetry  for 
some  honest  prose,  but  we  must  recognise  it  in  us 
nevertheless  and  make  the  best  of  it,  and  the  best  is 
not  quite  as  bad  as  it  looks.  Let  us  look  for  the 
soul  of  good  in  sentimentality.     It  is  purely  English 

184 


POETS 

to  begin  with.  The  fun  is  that  we  stare  at  German 
sentimentality  for  instance,  because  it  is  different 
from  ours,  though  it  is  probably  less  and  certainly 
simpler ;  what  is  the  mere  schwarmerei  compared 
with  our  hundred  different  forms  of  make-believe  ? 
We  sometimes  call  Russians  sentimental,  because 
many  of  them  are  capable  of  fanaticism,  which  is  not 
quite  the  same  thing.  We  have  a  childish  habit  of 
calling  Italians  and  all  Southerners  sentimental,  be- 
cause they  talk  more  loudly  than  we  and  kiss  in 
public.  I  believe  I  have  even  heard  it  said  by  my 
countrymen  that  the  French  are  sentimental,  because 
a  French  father  kisses  his  grown-up  son  on  a  railway 
platform.  The  truth  is  that  English  sentimentality 
cannot  be  beaten.  It  takes  many  different  forms 
much  subtler  than  those  plain  old  ones  of  Christmas 
cards,  valentines,  Philippines,  patriotic  music  hall 
sketches,  and  plays  that  '*  do  not  leave  a  nasty  taste 
in  the  mouth."  It  shows  itself  in  many  little  ways  of 
looking  at  hfe.  In  a  moment  of  insight  an  intelligent 
Englishwoman  said  to  me  :  "  Only  the  English  know 
how  to  spoon."  In  a  moment  rather  of  meditation 
an  equally  intelligent  Frenchwoman  told  me  :  "  You 
English  always  set  yourselves  to  imagine  a  thing,  and 
ever  after  pretend  it  is  true."  Both  women  were 
right.  We  have  (as  I  have  said  already)  a  hundred 
ways  of  not  looking  life  in  the  face — and  that  is  our 
sentimentality.  We  dodge  round  the  realities,  and 
every  sidelook  we  get  at  them  we  make  out  to  be  the 

185 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

only  true  and  proper  view  which  a  pretty  sentiment 
can  obtain.     We  are  convinced  that  whoso  does  [look 
always  at  all  life  is  not  a  nice  person :  we  are  poets. 
As  the  Frenchwoman  said,  we  set  up  a  dream  land 
worship  it  for  reality ;   as  the  Englishwoman  said, 
only  we  know  how  to  make  provisional  sexual  pre- 
tences,  and  we    invented   flirtation.       All  English 
sentimentality  is  pretending,  all  this  pretending  comes 
from   the  rooted  instinct   of  dreaming.     Even  the 
lowest  forms  of  dreaming  have  some  poetry ;  there 
is  some  poetry  even  in  the  most  stupid  pretending 
and  even  in  the  most  dangerous  pretending,  even  in 
the  unintelligent  desire  of  a  public  that  flocks  year 
after  year  to  any  plays  of  fancy  in  which  the  fancy 
makes  long  and  violent  efforts  to  be  the  right  thing 
and  always  misses — even  in  British  hypocrisy.     Any 
sham   fairy  can  charm  the  yearning  British  public, 
even  more  truly  perhaps  than  our  own  English  Ariel. 
British  hypocrisy  has  often  been   praised  on  moral 
grounds,  but  it  is  really  interesting  only  because  it  is 
a  crude  reply  to  the  cry  of  a  crudely  poetic  nature. 
There  is  evidently  no  moral  use  at  all  in  "  pretending 
we  are  better  than  we  are,"  but  there  is  a  soul  of 
pathetic  idealism  in  the  pretence.     The  realist,  if  he 
is  intelligent  and  reflective,  will,  if  anything,  make 
himself  out  worse  than  he  is ;  his  is  a  much  safer 
course  than  ours,  but  ours,  with  all  its  moral  dangers, 
has  a  faint  poetry  not  to  be  found  in  the  blunt  prose 
of  sincerity. 

186 


POETS 

The  least  intelligent  French  are  too  intelligent  to 
be  sentimental,  but  they  can  be  stupidly  realist  as  we 
can  be  stupidly  sentimental.  The  lowest  forms  of 
British  pretence  they  never  descend  to.  "  Pretty  " 
plays  hold  the  English  stage  for  years  which  would 
be  laughed  off  the  French  at  the  first  performance  ; 
pretty  fictions  are  kept  up  for  generations  by  the 
English  Press  which  French  readers  would  not  even 
take  as  good  jokes  from  their  papers  ;  the  rawest 
kinds  of  British  hypocrisy  the  French  temper  is 
incapable  of  practising  and  cannot  conceive  to  be 
worth  the  trouble.  It  sees  no  use  or  fun  in  foolish 
pretences,  but  its  failing  is  to  discern  moreover  no 
value  vin  any  make-believe  at  all.  The  common 
English  mind  sees  hardly  anything  of  reality  and 
feeds  chiefly  on  trivial  dreams ;  the  common  French 
looks  very  hard  only  at  one  small  corner  of  reality 
and  will  not  be  driven  out  of  the  persuasion  that  that 
is  all  the  world.  The  lowest  forms  of  the  two 
national  characters  are  consistent  with  the  highest : 
one  people  enjoys  the  foolish  illusions  of  such  a  play 
as  Caste  and  brought  forth  that  Ariel  among  men, 
Shelley  ;  the  other  enjoys  the  Palais-Royal  farce  that 
goes  on  shaking  up  the  same  two  or  three  very 
strictly  defined  reahties,  and  brought  forth  the  most 
purely  human  of  dramatists.  Moliere  probably  under- 
stood nothing  inhuman;  the  French  mind  at  the 
bottom  of  the  scale  does  not  understand  the  pleasure 
of  pretending,  even  French  children  are  not  good  at 

187 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

making  believe,  Frenchmen  rarely  even  appreciate 
the  subtle  joys  of  hypocrisy :  nothing  is  less  poetic 
than  the  common  French  mind. 

The  intelligent  English  mind,  if  it  reflects  upon 
itself,  will  usually  find,  perhaps  sometimes  with  some 
surprise,  that  it  does  not  naturally  conceive  intel- 
ligence without  poetry.  If  it  thinks  of  an  intelligent 
man,  it  thinks  of  him  as  a  man  of  various  gifts,  but 
among  which  there  is  a  dash  of  poetry.  He  must 
have  reason,  insight,  taste,  quick  and  true  perceptions, 
a  wide  and  strong  grasp,  he  must  see  keenly  and 
truly,  and  think  far  and  right ;  but  will  the  intelUgent 
English  think  of  him  as  really  intelligent  if  with  all 
that  there  is  no  grain  of  poetry  in  his  composition  ? 
Besides  what  a  faulty  terminology  calls  intellectual 
qualities,  fancy  is  required  of  him  ;  besides  reason, 
intuition ;  besides  mind,  some  mystery.  It  will  be 
found  that  whatever  his  other  parts,  we  will  not  call 
a  man  intelligent  if  he  is  without  a  sense  of  mystery ; 
the  French  will.  To  them  as  a  rule  there  is  nothing 
mystical  about  mind,  it  is  an  understandable,  clear 
and  precise  force,  probably  the  only  one  in  the  world 
that  is  so ;  to  say  je  pense  done  je  suis  is  to  affirm  as 
much,  and  almost  all  intelligent  Frenchmen  are 
Cartesians.  Not  only  will  a  man  be  quite  well  called 
intelligent  by  intelligent  Frenchmen  who  has  no 
mystery  in  him,  but  he  will  often  be  called  completely 
intelligent ;  and  it  will  not  be  held  that  there  is  any- 
thing essential  wanting   in   him,  even  if  he  denies 

188 


POETS 

mystery  and  won't  have  it  at  any  price.  To  the 
English  intelligence  such  a  man  lacks  about  what  he 
lacks  who  "  hath  no  music  in  him  "  ;  to  the  French, 
the  mystic  sense  may  be  a  bloom  on  the  mind  or  it 
may  be  a  blight,  it  is  not  of  the  essence  of  mind,  it  is 
merely  added  to  mind :  some  French  thinkers  will 
call  it  a  pleasant  ornament,  others  a  disagreeable 
kink,  almost  none  think  that  it  alters  the  mind's 
structure,  or  that  the  mind's  actual  grasp  of  reality 
can  be  different  for  having  it  or  lacking  it.  This  is 
as  much  as  to  say,  and  indeed  the  French  mind 
nearly  always  will  say,  that  there  is  no  final  truth  in 
mystery.  A  mind  thinking  thus  thinks  essentially 
in  prose.  Among  the  intelligent  men  of  the  matter- 
of-fact  English  people,  there  are  exceedingly  few 
who  are  as  matter-of-fact  intellectually  as  the  majority 
of  intelligent  Frenchmen. 

There  is  no  finer  intellectual  machinery  than  that 
of  the  French  intelligence,  and  there  are  probably 
more  really  intelligent  men  in  France  than  in  any 
other  country ;  the  average  intelligence  in  England 
is  almost  certainly  lower  and  the  works  of  the  intelli- 
gent English  mind  are  seldom  as  well  adjusted  as 
those  of  the  French — and  this  fine  French  mind 
seldom  has  that  understanding  of  poetry  without 
which  an  English  mind  will  not  be  called  intelli- 
gent. I  have  known  several  Frenchmen  of  extra- 
ordinary intelligence  who  were  not  poets.  They 
had   Moliere's    *'  clart^s   de    tout "   in    the    highest 

189 


THE' FRENCH   AND   THE  ENGLISH 

sense ;  no  human  knowledge  was  a  shut  book  to 
them,  they  had  at  least  opened  every  book  though 
too  wise  to  say  with  Mallarme  (who  happened  not 
to  be  one  of  them),  "  et  j'ai  lu  tous  les  livres " ; 
they  not  only  could  stand  up  to  any  specialised 
"expert,"  but  had  thought  over  all  the  experts' 
heads:  the  whole  world  was  theirs — except  a  few 
pages  of  poetry.  They  were,  of  course,  as  good  at 
literature  as  at  other  arts  and  sciences,  and  the 
mathematicians  among  them  wrote  better  than  most 
writers  among  their  English  equals  ;  they  were  artists 
as  they  were  thinkers — and  they  were  not  poets. 
They  were  men  for  instance  who  could  call  Byron  a 
poet  and  even  (in  extreme  cases)  greater  than  Shelley, 
who  could  deny  Verlaine,  or  whom  the  childishness 
of  Wagner  would  prevent  from  understanding  his 
poetry.  They  would,  praising  Othello  above  all  plays, 
be  blind  to  King  Lear,  to  the  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  to  The  Tempest,  admire  deeply  only  what  is 
human  in  Macbeth,  put  a  fox  of  La  Fontaine  above 
Ariel,  call  the  fancy  that  made  Athene  and  Hermes 
the  only  true  fancy  because  it  is  human,  and  that 
which  made  Erda  and  Siegfried  false  because  inhuman. 
Arguing  with  such  men,  one  almost  thought  that  it 
is  possible  to  be  too  intelligent  (which  is  absurd)  or 
that  the  mind  may  grow  beyond  the  sense  of  mystery, 
which  is  not  true.  They  possessed  an  almost  com- 
plete comprehension  of  ahnost  all  the  world,  and  a 
total  incomprehension  of  the  rest  of  the  world.     The 

190 


POETS 

small  corner  of  the  world  which  is  that  rest  of  the 
world  is!to  us  much  of  the  poetry  of  the  world.  The 
French  intelligence  is  supreme  up  to  that  point ;  at 
that  point  it  supremely  fails. 

The  greatest  Englishmen  have  been  great  poets, 
the  greatest  Frenchmen  have  been  great  prose 
thinkers.  The  French  have  rebelled  greatly  in 
action,  we  have  been  the  greatest  rebels  in  thought 
Great,  swift  and  irresistibly  strong  French  deeds  have 
realised  ideas.  We  have  been  cowards  at  acting  our 
thoughts,  but  our  thoughts  have  dared  more  than 
ever  durst  those  of  French  revolutions.  The  ideas  of 
the  Encyclopedistes  stirred  no  depths  ;  the  men  of  the 
French  Revolution  changed  the  world,  and  they 
thought  like  children,  like  simple,  terrific  baby  giants. 
We  made  timid,  safe,  practical  political  revolutions, 
which  ran  away  in  a  panic  from  any  ideal  or  general 
idea,  but  our  poets  went  whither  no  French  thinker 
ventured.  The  French  Revolution  was  revolt  in 
action  such  as  we  have  never  dared  try,  but  our 
poetry  of  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was,  like  the  Elizabethan,  greater  revolt  in  thought 
than  the  French  have  ever  dared  try.  Even  our 
philosophers  have  been  greater  rebels  in  thought  than 
the  French  revolutionists.  Girondins  and  Jacobins 
would  have  called  it  blasphemy  against  the  Goddess 
Reason  to  deny  innate  ideas,  and  after  that  gentle 
Darwin  changed  the  world  perhaps  more  deeply  than 
did   the   Declaration   of  the   Rights  of  Man.     The 

191 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

French  Revolution,  called  idealistic,  had  truly  no 
really  revolutionary  ideas  at  all,  and  could  only 
perfunctorily  think,  having  time  only  to  act.  The 
immediately  following  success  of  Napoleon,  the  hater 
of  ideas  and  "  ideologists,"  was  a  brilliant  perversion  of 
an  essential  French  national  trait.  There  was  poetry 
in  him,  not  for  himself  to  feel,  for  poets  to  find,  but 
he  was  himself  the  only  poetry  of  Napoleonic  France, 
he  killed  all  other,  all  thoughts  and  dreams,  and  the 
French  character,  thus  exploited,  could  wear  with 
some  complacence  the  blinkers  he  kept  firmly 
harnessed  on. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  two  peoples  that  the 
French  encourages  its  prose  thinkers  to  be  prose 
thinkers  and  that  we  do  not  encourage  our  poets  to 
be  poets.  The  greatest  Frenchmen  have  been  much 
more  French  than  the  greatest  Englishmen  have 
been  English ;  England's  greatest  men  have  fre- 
quently been  at  war  with  England,  have  left  her, 
lived  and  died  and  been  buried  away  from  her.  Very 
few  great  Frenchmen  have  turned  their  backs  on 
France,  and  France  has  turned  her  back  on  very  few 
of  her  great  men  :  perhaps  none  have  been  called  by 
her  un-French,  we  have  usually  called  ours  un- 
English  while  they  lived.  Are  we  or  our  great  men 
to  be  blamed?  Are  the  French  or  are  their  great 
men  to  be  praised  ?  Some  say  a  poet  is  harder  to 
understand  than  a  prose  thinker,  but  I  question 
whether,  had  our  greatest  men  been  prose  thinkers 

192 


POETS 

we  should  have  understood  them  any  better.  Indeed, 
what  we,  though  dimly,  understand  best  is  poetry, 
not  prose,  which  we  do  not  understand  at  all. 
The  Greeks  proved  that  poets  can  be  as  national  as 
prose  thinkers,  if  not  more  so.  Yet,  although  we 
have  in  us  the  obscure  elements  much  more  of  poetry 
than  of  prose,  even  our  national  Shakespeare  is  far 
less  a  national  English  poet  than  Moliere  is  a  national 
French  prose  thinker.  Certainly  the  French  have  a 
better  understanding  of  their  own  qualities  than  we 
have  of  ours,  and  one  may  even  suppose  that  if, 
having  the  same  intelHgence,  they  had  been,  as  we 
really  are,  given  to  thinking  best  in  poetry  instead  of 
in  prose,  they  would  have  understood  their  poets, 
who  would  then  no  doubt  have  been  their  greatest 
men,  better  than  we  do  ours.  We  are  both  the  more 
poetic  and  duller  people. 

We  should,  then,  encourage  our  rebellion  not  our 
discipline,  because  we  are  better  at  freeing  than  at 
organising.  The  French,  because  they  are  better  at 
ordering  than  at  dreaming,  should  foster  their  reason 
rather  than  their  fancy,  and  they  do,  because  they 
know  themselves  much  better  than  we  know  our- 
selves. All  their  thinking  tends  to  put  order  into 
the  world,  because  they  know  that  to  be  their  world's 
work ;  we  do  not  recognise  that  ours  is  to  put  fancy 
into  it.  From  our  cranks  to  our  poets,  we  misprize 
those  who  really  represent  us  and  who  are  really 
English.     The   French  are  right  not   to   set  much 

193  o 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

store  by  their  rebels,  but  we  should  worship  ours. 
We  could  not,  if  we  tried  to,  be  the  pendulum  and 
the  measure  of  the  world  the  French  are,  and  it  is 
vain   to   strengthen   one's   weakness,  useful   only  to 
make  the  most  of  one's  strength.     Ours  has  always 
been  to  upset  the  balance  and  disturb  the  rules  ;  it  is, 
so  to  speak,  less  than  superficial  to  talk  of  French 
unruliness  and  English  order.     In  all  the  things  that 
really  matter  at  last,  we  have  upset  and  the  French 
have    built,    the    French    have    realised  where   we 
dreamt.     We  must  foster  our  dreams  which  are  our 
strength  ;  we  must  pray  for  more  rebellion,  not  more 
discipline,  for  (to  use  bad  words)  more  heterodoxy  not 
more  orthodoxy,  for  more  war  of  creeds,  not  for  more 
peace,  we  must  wish  for  more  fighting  among  our- 
selves, not  for  more  unity.     We  can  never  hope  to 
agree  as  the  French  do  :  let  us  leave  unity  to  them. 
We  can  never  hope  to  face  life  as  the  French  do  :  let 
us  leave  realism  to  them.     The  English  mind  dreams 
from  cricket  to  Shelley  :  let  it  dream,  for  it  is  best  at 
dreaming.     In  English,  prose  is  shameful ;  there  is  no 
such  word  in  French  as  "  prosy."     True  Englishmen 
in  their  heart  of  heart  hold  that  this  makes  them  the 
greater  men.     If  they  ever  learnt  to  be  as  intelligent 
as  the  French,  it  would  be  the  poetry  in  them  that 
still  would  really  count. 


194 


POETEY 


XI 


POETRY 


"  In  Xanadu  did  Kubla  Khan 
A  stately  pleasure  dome  decree. 

...  I  would  build  that  dome  in  air, 
That  sunny  dome,  those  caves  of  ice. 
And  all  who  heard  should  see  them  there, 
And  all  should  cry,  Beware,  beware. 
His  flashing  eyes,  his  floating  hair. 
Weave  a  circle  round  him  thrice. 
And  close  your  eyes  with  holy  dread, 
For  he  on  honeydew  has  fed. 
And  drunk  the  milk  of  paradise." 

This  we  call  poetry.  I  doubt  whether  we  care  what 
it  means.  Does  it  really  mean  much  ?  It  need 
mean  nothing.  It  exists  by  itself;  it  is  poetry. 
Whether  Coleridge  understood  his  dream — if  dream 
he  had — did  he  or  do  we  care  ?  To  any  mind  that 
knows  poetry  when  it  sees  it,  those  lines  spring 
instantly  as  true  and  real.  We  feel  that  in  them  is 
that  something  which  makes  poetry,  and  could 
neither  reason  our  feeling  nor  be  reasoned  out  of  it. 
The  perception  is  immediate,  and  all  we  can  say  of 
those  to  whom  the  perception  has  not  come  is  that 
grace  has  been  denied  them. 

197 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

*'  Rome,  I'linique  objet  de  mon  ressentiment, 
Rome,  a  qui  vient  ton  bras  d'immoler  mon  amant, 
Rome  qui  t'a  vu  naitre  et  que  ton  ccBur  adore, 
Rome,  enfin,  que  je  hais  parcequ'elle  t'honore  .  .  ." 

This  many  French  minds  call  poetry,  and  will  tell 
you  why.  The  four  lines  and  the  rest  of  Camille's 
famous  cursing  have  fire  and  swing  which  every  ear 
must  feel.  They  are  terse  with  hardly  a  word  too 
much,  and  aptly  dramatic  without  a  word  out  of  the 
situation  ;  they  say  what  they  mean  to  say  and  say  it 
with  the  utmost  force ;  they  have  passionate  elo- 
quence. Granted  the  situation  of  "  Horace  "  and  the 
character  of  Camille,  they  fit  the  one  and  suit  the 
other  wholly.  They  have,  finally,  the  music  of 
words,  a  gorgeous  organ-thunder  of  rhythmical 
words  :  hence  they  are  poetry. 

We  feel  them  not  to  be  poetry.  We  call  them 
anything  you  like,  but  not  poetry.  We  call  them 
apt,  eloquent,  characteristic,  dramatic,  musical,  and 
artistic.  Then  they  are  poetry,  say  those  who  call 
them  so.  They  are  not  poetry,  because  they  have 
not  that  which  is  indefinable  and  which  is  none  of 
those  things,  but  which  makes  poetry  and  makes 
those  lines  of  Coleridge  poetry.  The  French  hte- 
rary  mind  that  calls  Camille's  "  Imprecations " 
poetry  asks  what  the  indefinable  may  be,  and  what 
its  use,  sense,  and  fruits  can  be  in  art.  The  only 
answer  is,  we  feel  it. 

"Kubla  Khan"  and  the  "Curses  of  Camille" 
afford,  perhaps,  the  most  violent  contrast  which  the 

198 


POETRY 

arbitrary  choice  of  any  two  passages  of  verse  of 
wholly  incommensurate  qualities  can  show.  No  man 
of  poetic  sense,  or  only  of  sense,  would  think  of  com- 
paring the  two.  They  lack  the  essential  common 
measure,  being  the  one  poetry  the  other  verse,  as 
between  the  literary  standards  of  a  mind  that  feels  the 
former  to  be  poetry  and  of  one  that  calls  the  latter 
poetry  a  common  measure  is  also  wanting.  The 
contrast  serves  only  for  a  demonstration  of  extremes. 
Only  an  extreme  form  of  literary  judgment  calls  the 
"  Curses  of  Camille  "  poetry,  either  because,  though 
detecting  the  indefinable  something  which  makes 
Coleridge's  lines  what  they  are  and  different,  it  finds 
those  of  Corneille  to  be  none  the  less  poetry  for 
lacking  that  something ;  or  else  because,  denying  the 
indefinable,  it  holds  that  the  completeness  of  poetry 
is  to  be  found  in  Corneille's  lines.  If  the  judgment 
were  not  an  extreme  one  of  the  French  literary  mind, 
we  should  have  to  conclude  that  the  latter  was  by 
temperament  foreign  to  poetry.  Verlaine  would 
have  written — 

"  Que  ton  vers  soit  la  chose  envol^e 
Qu'on  sent  qui  fuit  d'une  ame  en  alMe 
Vers  d'autres  cieux  a  d'autres  amours  .  .  ." 

as  an  alien  in  French  literature,  and  such  a  line  as 
Mallarme's — 

"  Le  transparent  glacier  des  vols  qui  n'ont  pas  fui," 

or — 

^'Tel  qu'en  lui-meme  enfin  I'^ternit^  le  change" 
199 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

would  be  un-French.  It  is  obvious  that  these  Hues 
have  the  same  mysterious  quahty  as  "  Kubla  Khan," 
and  that  the  French  mind  that  feels  that  quality  in 
them  and  the  EngUsh  mind  that  feels  it  in  "  Kubla 
Khan"  are  of  one  kin  in  the  poetic  spirit.  It  is 
equally  clear  that  these  Unes  are  as  far  from  the 
"  Curses  of  Camille  "  as  the  latter  are  from  the  pas- 
sage of  Coleridge.  The  French  mind  that  calls  the 
"  Curses  of  Camille  "  poetry  is  therefore  not  all  the 
French  mind. 

It  is  an  extreme  type  of  French  Uterary  mind, 
yet  it  cannot  be  called  an  abnormal  one  in  the  land 
of  its  growth.  It  is  not  only  quite  sane  and  healthy, 
apart  from  poetry,  but  it  flourishes  usefully  in  other 
literary  fields,  and  individual  minds  more  or  less  near 
to  the  extreme  type  are  plentiful,  and  a  power  in 
French  literature.  No  study  of  the  poetic  spirit  in 
France,  though  they  are  the  negation  of  it,  would  be 
complete  without  them.  Themselves  hold  them- 
selves to  be  the  essence  and  the  base  of  French  lite- 
rature. We  may  have  to  acknowledge  in  the  end 
that  they  are  right,  and  that  French  literature  is 
essentially  and  fundamentally  prosaic ;  that  the 
poetic  spirit  in  it  is  a  beautiful  accident,  a  splendid 
ornament,  not  a  part  of  the  substance  or  the  neces- 
sary framework  of  tlie  building ;  that  French  litera- 
ture, shorn  of  its  poetry,  would  not  topple  and  melt 
away,  wliereas  England,  if  she  had  not  had  her  poets, 
would   perhaps   have   missed   her    world's    work   in 

200 


POETRY 

letters.  Anyhow,  it  is  a  unique  peculiarity  of  French 
literature  that  the  study  of  its  poetry  must  first  take 
into  account  that  of  its  poetry  which  is  not  poetry. 
In  the  English  language  hardly  any  merely  versified 
work  is  of  the  slightest  importance  to  the  student, 
and  that  of  the  poet  is  sufficient  unto  itself.  In 
French  literature  the  study  of  the  poetic  spirit  must 
begin  with  the  study  of  the  French  literary  spirit 
that  calls  the  *'  Curses  of  Camille  "  poetry. 
No  one  in  England  calls  Pope's 

''Know  then  thyself,  presume  not  God  to  scan, 
The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man," 

poetry ;  in  France,  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  the 
second  line,  if  it  had  been  written  in  French,  might 
be  called  "  un  beau  vers."  To  fit  the  French  defini- 
tion of  Un  beau  vers  a  line  need  not  be  poetry  at 
all,  and  it  need  have  neither  beauty  nor  the  music 
of  words ;  in  fact,  to  fit  perfectly  the  definition 
familiar  to  that  extreme  type  of  French  literary 
mind  it  must  not  have  either  mysterious  beauty  or 
the  pure  music  of  words.  Innumerable  examples 
run  through  the  memory  of  all  who  have  read 
French  verse. 

" '  Que  vouliez  vous  qu'il  fit  contre  trois  ?  '     '  Qu'il  mourlat '  " 

"  Ciuua,  tu  le  savais,  et  veux  m'assassiner." 
" '  Albe  vous  a  choisij  je  ne  vous  couiiais  plus/ 
*  Je  vous  counais  encore '"  .  .  .  (The  rest  is  padding.) 
"  Je  rends  graces  au  ciel  de  n'etre  pas  Romain, 

Pour  conserver  encore  quelquechose  d'humain." 
" Sors  vainqueur  dun  combat  dont  Chimfene  est  le  prix." 
"  Cette  obscure  clarte  qui  tombe  des  ^toiles." 

201 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

or  to  go  to  Racine  after  Corneille  : 

'*  Ce  n'est  plus  uue  ardeur  en  mes  veines  cachde 

C'est  Venus  tout  entiere  a  sa  proie  attachee," 
'' Je  I'aime,  je  le  fuis  ;  Titus  m'aime,  il  me  quitte." 
** Comment  en  un  plomb  vil  Tor  pur  s'est  il  change?  " 

or  to  go,  after  Racine,  to  Victor  Hugo : 

"  L' ombre  ^tait  nuptiale,  auguste  et  solennelle." 
"  L'oeil  etait  dans  la  tombe  et  regardait  Cain." 
"Car  Dieu,  de  I'araignee,  avait  faitle  soleil." 
"Donne  lui  tout  de  meme  a  boire,  dit  mon  pfere." 

These  all  fit  the  definition  of  Un  beau  vers  or 
two.  They  have  neither  beauty  nor  the  music  of 
words :  they  are  not  poetry.  They  have  an  interest 
of  their  own  ;  they  are  terse,  dramatic,  and  epigram- 
matic, and  perhaps  a  definition  for  English  minds  of 
Un  beau  vers  in  French  might  be  a  versified  dramatic 
epigram.  AVhen  the  father  of  the  Horatii,  asked 
what  his  son  should  have  done,  answers  he  should 
have  died,  the  whole  spirit  of  the  drama,  conven- 
tional or  not,  but  the  spirit  that  was  intended  to  be 
conveyed,  is  expressed  in  the  fewest  words  that 
could  have  been  found.  Augustus  has  retold  to 
Cinna  all  that  he  has  done  for  Cinna,  and  that  Cinna 
knows  ;  he  turns  upon  Cinna  with,  **  Thou  knowest, 
and  wilt  murder  me."  The  one  thing  Cinna  did 
not  know  was  that  Augustus  knew  Cinna  meant  to 
murder  him.  No  one  line  could  have  summed  up 
a  good  theatrical  situation  better. 

All  these  beaux  vers  are  excellently  dramatic 
epigrams,  they  are  not  poetry.     Why  are  such  lines 

202 


POETRY 

as  "After  life's  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well"  and 
"All  our  yesterdays  have  lighted  fools  The  way 
to  dusty  death"  poetry?  These  in  relation  to  the 
dramatic  situation  are  apt,  terse,  and  simple  like 
any  beau  vers.  Corneille  could  not  have  written 
either  with  fewer  ornaments  or  with  more  direct 
and  forcible  sense.  But  they  are  not  beaux  vers, 
they  are  poetry ;  between  those  and  these  a  whole 
world  lies,  a  partly  inexplicable  world.  What  is  the 
essential  difference  between  " '  Que  vouliez  vous 
qu'il  fit  contre  trois  ? '  *  Quil  mourut ' "  and  "  After 
life's  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well"?  The  former  is 
superbly  heroic,  the  latter  is  tragic,  and  what  else  ? 
That  it  makes  us  ask,  what  else  ?  is  its  secret.  The 
line  of  Corneille  is  dramatic,  heroic,  and  magnificent, 
and  there  it  stops ;  it  is  finished  and  complete,  it 
lasts  no  more  than  it  lasts,  it  is  done  when  it  is 
done,  it  has  no  echoes,  it  sounds  no  harmonics  and 
throws  no  feelers.  It  is  un  beau  vers,  and  when 
the  beau  vers  is  over — it  is  over,  rounded  off*  and 
punctuated  with  a  full  stop.  But  "After  life's 
fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well,"  definite  and  final  as  the 
actual  phrase  is,  sends  waves  through "  the  mind  that 
do  not  stop.  By  the  power  of  its  words  it  calls  up 
images  which  are  not  limited.  That  it  should  be 
Macbeth  who  speaks  of  life's  fitful  fever,  that  he 
should  speak  of  sleeping  well,  that  the  man  who 
sleeps  well  should  be  the  King  he  murdered  asleep, 
is  essential  tragedy.     But  while  there  is  that  in  those 

203 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

seven  words,  there  is  more,  and  it  is  the  more  that 
makes  them  poetry.  The  actual  sound  of  the  words 
has  its  own  magic,  and  the  sound  is  inseparable  from 
the  sense.  The  two  are  bound  inexplicably  with 
one  another,  and  to  point  to  the  alliteration,  the 
four  f 's  and  the  v  and  the  twelve  s's,  to  the  sudden 
adagio  of  the  soft  long-drawn  vowels  of  "he  "  and 
"  sleeps  "  after  the  staccato  of  the  preceding  syllables, 
the  sudden  pianissimo  staccato  close  of  the  "  well," 
full  of  Macbeth's  desperate  longing  in  his  moment 
of  weakness  for  that  sleep,  would  be  no  more,  if  no 
less,  an  explanation,  than  it  was  to  point  to  the 
tragedy  which  the  meaning  of  the  words  derives 
from  the  dramatic  situation.  The  whole  is  a 
mystery  as  all  poetry  is.  The  beau  vers  is  no 
mystery. 

Verlaine  wrote ; 

"  Et  pour  sa  voix,  lointaine  et  calme  et  grave, 

EUe  a  I'inflexiou  des  voix  cheres  qui  se  sout  tues." 

Compare  this  with : 

"  Les  Maures  en  fuyant  ont  emportd  son  crime  " 

(or  any  other  historic  beau  vers  at  will,  for  in  the 
estimation  of  the  poetic  quality  questions  of  meaning, 
of  context,  of  style,  of  genre,  are  undoubtedly  second- 
ary), and  wonder  how  the  same  mind  can  call  the  two 
poetry.  Such  a  mind  is  the  greatest  problem  of 
French  literary  psychology.  The  mind  that  calls 
Corneille's  line  poetry  and  those  of  Verlaine  not,  or 
inferior,  is  easy  to  understand ;  it  is  one  that  knows 

204 


POETRY 

what  poetry  is  about  as  well  as  Theophile  Gaiitier 
knew  what  music  is,  which  he  called  noise.  A  peculi- 
arity of  the  French  is  that  such  minds  with  "  wisdom 
at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out "  may  exist  intelligently 
and  usefully  in  their  literature,  may  think  acutely  and 
do  good  work  in  other  fields,  may  be  valuable  creators 
as  well  as  critics,  may  write  perfect  prose,  and  even 
poetic  prose,  the  quality  of  which,  of  course,  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  poetic  spirit,  and  may  possibly 
be  its  contradictory.  More,  they  often  persist  in 
writing  in  verse,  and  do  it  exceedingly  well,  putting 
into  it  all  sorts  of  qualities  except  poetry.  Boileau 
had  great  good  sense,  judgment,  and  literary  acumen, 
and  had  he  only  cured  himself  of  his  unholy  passion 
for  writing  in  verse,  might  in  prose  have  been  an 
excellent  critic  ;  as  a  "  poet "  he  is  a  warning  to  every 
versifier.  It  is  probably  impossible  for  a  writer  to 
have  less  poetry  in  his  composition  than  he  had.  The 
opening  lines  of  his  Art  Poetique  (still  learnt  by  heart 
in  French  Public  Schools  to  this  day  in  the  "Rhetoric  " 
class)  are  very  likely  the  most  remarkable  monument 
of  pompous  platitude  and  blundering,  commonplace, 
and  nonsensical  simile  extant  in  any  language : 

""  C'est  en  rain  qu'au  Paruasse  un  temeraire  auteur 
Pense  de  I'art  des  vers  atteindre  la  hauteur, 
S'il  ne  sent  point  du  ciel  I'influence  secrete, 
Si  son  astre  en  naissant  ne  I'a  forme  poete, 
Pour  lui  Phebus  est  sourd  et  Pegase  est  retif." 

Lines  of  his  remain  as  classics : 

"  Vingt  fois  sur  le  metier  remettez  vottre  ouvrage  " 

205 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

or, 

"  Qui  ne  sut  se  borner  ne  sut  jamais  ecrire.'* 

To  judge  the  mind  to  which  these  two  hnes,  the 
latter,  at  all  events,  of  which  has  the  value  of  a  good, 
honest,  pertinently  put  axiom,  are  poetry,  is  plain 
saihng.  To  such  a  mind  poetry  means  verse,  and 
verse  is  a  vehicle,  which  may  at  will  be  employed  for 
conveying  exactly  the  same  thoughts  as  can  be  con- 
veyed in  prose,  and  the  use  of  which  under  certain 
circumstances  may  be  recommended  to  give  greater 
point  to  the  expression  of  those  thoughts.  No  litera- 
ture, except  perhaps  the  Latin,  has  produced  such 
admirable  prose  writers  in  verse  as  the  French.  The 
prince  of  them  all  is  Moliere,  the  unequalled. 

"  '  Qu'est  ce  done  ?    Qu'avez  vous  ? '     'Laissez  moi,  je  vous  prie? 
'  Mais  encor  dites  moi  quelle  bizarrerie.  .  .  .' 
*  Laissez  moi  la,  vous  dis-je  et  courez  vous  cacber.' 
'  Mais  on  entend  les  gens  au  moins  sans  se  facher.' 
'  Moi  je  venx  me  fS.cberet  ne  veux  point  entendre.'  " 

Was  ever  such  real  talk  put  into  such  easy  verse  ? 
Such  perfect  work  is  unknown  in  the  English  langu- 
age. There  is,  of  course,  no  atom  of  poetry  in  the 
"  Misanthrope,"  or  in  any  of  Moliere's  verse  plays, 
not  even  in  Amphitryon,  with  its  delicious  lines  like 
*'  Le  Seigneur  Jupiter  sait  dorer  la  pilule."  The  only 
atom  of  poetry  in  M  oliere  is  at  the  end  of  that  prose 
comedy  of  his  which  becomes  a  tragedy,  *'  Don  Juan." 
MolicTC  is  the  proof  of  the  theory  of  those  who  do  not 
know  what  poetry  is,  of  those  extreme  French  literary 

206 


POETRY 

minds,  of  the  so-called  classicists.  Here,  they  say,  is 
the  greatest  of  poets  ;  this  is  poetry,  there  is  no  other, 
or,  at  least,  no  other  equal  to  it ;  the  plane  of  other 
poetries  is  lower ;  this  is  the  human,  therefore  the 
perfect  poetry.  The  standpoint  is  not  absurd ;  the 
world  at  one  entrance  is  quite  shut  out,  but  within 
that  limited  horizon,  closed  to  the  infinite  spaces  of 
poetry,  opening  on  no  foam  of  perilous  seas,  taste  is 
delicate,  art  refined,  judgment  sound,  and  the  intelli- 
gence of  human  things  is  keen  and  deep. 

The  real  problem  is  that  of  the  mind  which  accepts 
both  those  two  lines  of  Verlaine  and  that  one   of 
Corneille   (for    example)   as  poetry.      The   extreme 
attitude  is  growing  rare,  even  the  French  Academy 
does,  or  at  least  some  Academicians  do,  distinguish 
now  between  poetry  and  verse,  and  hold  no  longer 
that  ail  well-written  verse  is  poetry.      The  eclectic 
view  is  common  and  indeed  general.     Verlaine  him- 
self said  once  that  his  three  favourite  poets  were  La 
Fontaine,  Racine,  and  (perhaps  with  a  touch  of  per- 
versity) Boileau.     Few  French  men  of  letters  will  be 
found  to  reject  Corneille  (to  go  on  with  the  same 
example)  once  for  all  as  a  poet,  remembering  him 
only  as  perhaps  the  greatest  of  heroic  orators,  and  few 
men  of  literary  sensibility  can  remain  deaf  to  Verlaine. 
Yet  to  class  both  as  poets  is  an  altogether  incompre- 
hensible Hterary  method.     If  you  do  so,  let  there  then 
at  least  be  two  kinds  of  poetry,  one  of  which  we  will 
call  not  poetry.     To  give  the  same  name  to  things 

207 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

more  different  than  any  other  two  in  that  or  in  any 
other  art  is  the  strangest  of  errors. 

The  Hterary  faith  of  the  man  who  puts  Victor 
Hugo,  as  poet,  and  Verlaine  together,  and  Victor 
Hugo  above  Verlaine,  is  unfathomable.  Victor  Hugo 
was  the  most  amazing  example  of  a  mind  which  had 
instinctive  poetry  in  it,  and  in  which  that  instinctive 
poetry  was  well-nigh  ruined  by  total  intellectual 
inability  to  judge  reflectively  what  poetry  is.  His 
poetry  rarely  escapes  being  swamped  by  his  fatal  gift 
of  eloquence  ("take  eloquence  and  wring  its  neck," 
said  Verlaine),  but  his  inability  to  stem  the  flood  of 
that  eloquence  when  it  threatened  to  drown  what 
instinctive  poetry  there  was  in  him  came  from  his 
incapacity  to  know  poetry  with  his  judgment  when 
he  saw  it,  and  even  when  he  himself  produced  it  vidth 
his  feeling.  The  inability  of  a  man  to  recognise 
poetry  even  when  he  writes  it  himself  is  remarkable, 
but  it  is  not  unique,  and  is  only  another  proof  that 
poetry  is  a  mysterious  thing.  Victor  Hugo  is  an 
example  of  the  unfathomable  ways  of  the  poetic 
spirit.  Here  and  there  he  wrote  a  line  better  than 
he  knew.  The  rest  is  a  terrific  eloquence,  more 
enormous  than  any  literature  of  any  country  has  ever 
brought  fortli.  The  "  Legende  des  Siccles  "  is  astound- 
ing reading.  The  abundance  of  it,  the  picturesqueness, 
the  "  working  up,"  the  journalistic  sense,  if  not  of  the 
real,  of  the  plausible,  the  quick  appreciation  of  the 
thing  and  the  aspect  of  a  thing   that  will   directly 

208 


POETRY 

appeal  to  the  popular  imagination,  the  ability  to  see 
at  once  what  high  lights  in  a  picture  will  catch  every 
eye,  and  to  throw  them  up  in  their  best  value,  the 
talent  with  which  vignettes  of  history,  the  history  of 
amiable  romance,  are  picked  out  and  re-drawn  with 
ease  and  dash,  the  overwhelming  facility  with  which 
the  whole  panorama  is  hurled,  yet  with  a  modicum  of 
finished  detail,  upon  the  canvas,  are  amazing.  It  is 
not  less  astonishing  to  consider  how  few  pen'orths  of 
poetry  we  have  for  all  this  prodigious  quantity  of 
picturesqueness. 

The  criticism  of  literature  that,  while  not  denying 
the  divinity  of  Verlaine,  accepts  Victor  Hugo  as  the 
Jove  of  the  French  Olympus  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  and  which  accepts  him  thus,  not  crudely 
with  the  simplicity  of  popular  opinion,  fascinated  by 
the  figure  of  the  Grand  Old  Man  of  French  poetry, 
but  deliberately  and  maturely,  finally  and  repen- 
tantly, after  a  time  of  infidelity,  now  recanted,  to  his 
religion,  is  more  difficult  to  understand  than  the 
literary  judgment  that  calls  Boileau  a  didactic  poet 
and  Corneille  a  dramatic  poet.  Take  the  slightest, 
the  shadowiest  fines  of  Verlaine  : 

Dame  souris  trotte. 

Noire  dans  le  gris  du  soir. 
Dame  souris  trotte 

Grise  dans  le  noir. 

On  Sonne  la  cloche, 
Dormez  les  bons  prisonniers. 
On  Sonne  la  cloche, 
Faut  que  vous  dormiez. 

209  P 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Pas  de  mauvais  reve^ 
Ne  pensez  qu'a  vos  amours  .  .  . 

Un  nuage  passe,    <2>w,.' 
II  fait  noir  comme  da«<^  uu  four, 
Un  nuage  passe. 

Tieus,  le  petit  jour  ! 
Dame  souris  trotte. 
Rose  dans  les  rayons  bleus. 
Dame  souris  trotte. 
Debout,  paresseux  ! 

Is  there  any  poetry  such  as  even  these  mere  floating, 
gossamer  threads  in  more  than  three  or  four  poets  in 
the  world,  let  alone  Victor  Hugo  ?  One  cannot  handle 
it,  one  can  hardly  touch  it  without  breaking  it.  It 
shines  hke  webs  with  the  dew  on  them  at  sunrise. 
Nothing  was  ever  so  slight  and  slender  and  apparently 
so  simple,  yet  so  penetrating.  The  words  by  them- 
selves seem  nothing,  and  they  seem  put  together 
without  art.  They  might  have  dropped  into  their 
places  naturally,  and  have  been  spoken  off  as  they 
stand  written.  As  they  stand  there  is  magic  in 
them.  They  are  almost  nothing,  but  how  much  they 
call  up :  the  prison  dormitory  or  the  hospital  ward 
which  might  be  the  world  itself,  the  extraordinary 
quiet,  the  noiseless  mouse,  the  wide  open  eyes  of  the 
one  sleepless  man  watching  her,  the  wonderful  tender- 
ness of  it  all,  the  sweet  humanity  of  the  soft  "  dormez 
les  bons  prisonniers,"  and  the  tiny  touch  of  tragic 
pity  of  the  "  Faut  que  vous  dormiez  "  ;  the  suddenly 
new  picture  in  "  Tiens,  le  petit  jour,"  the  mouse  that 
had  pattered  "  Grise  dans  le  noir  "  through  the  night, 

210 


POETRY 

now  "  Rose  dans  les  rayons  bleus  " ;  the  abrupt  joy 
and  courage  of  "  Debout,  paresseux."  Was  ever 
poetry  truer  than  this  "  Impression  fausse  ?  "  Will 
ever  any  poet  tell  us  how  such  things  are  done,  and 
can  he  ever  tell  us  even  when  he  has  himself  done 
them  ?  We  cannot  even,  except  vaguely,  make  out 
why  the  thing  is  so  perfect  and  can  only  feel  it.  The 
dread  in  those  other  lines  of  Verlaine  is  a  piece  of  the 
same  mystery.  No  such  echoing  knell  was  ever  rung 
before. 

Un  grand  sommeil  noir 

Tombe  sur  ma  vie  : 
Donnez,  tout  espoir, 

Dormezj  toute  envie. 

We  feel  now  (as  one  always  does),  that  we  might 
have  written  those  mere  words,  in  which  is  a  so 
simply  put  and  final  lament,  that  the  words  were 
always  meant  to  be  put  together  so  one  day,  and  that 
those  four  short  lines  say  what  had  been  waiting  to 
be  thus  said. 

Je  suis  un  berceau 

Qu'une  main  balance 
Au  creux  d'un  caveau. 

Was  ever  so  much  misery  put  into  thirteen  words  ? 
Then  the  end :  "  Silence,  silence," — "  the  very  word  is 
like  a  bell " ;  the  word  has  taken  on  a  new  depth 
since  Verlaine  wrote  it  there.  It  was  not  a  particularly 
good  or  expressive  word  before,  the  very  sound  of  it 
seems  changed  from  what  we  have  remembered  it. 
It  is  the  same  magic  as  Keats  played  with  that  other 

211 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

as  hackneyed  word  "  forlorn,"  or  as  JNIeredith  made 
out  of  three  humblest  words  : — "  And  we  dropped 
like  the  fruits  of  the  tree,  Even  we,  Even  so." 

Of  the  man  who  makes  such  magic  Coleridge 
said — 

Weave  a  circle  round  him  thrice, 

And  close  your  eyes  with  holy  dread^ 
For  he  on  honey-dew  hath  fed, 

And  drunk  the  milk  of  Paradise. 

One  is  driven  to  conclude  that  the  French 
literary  mind  which  weighs  Victor  Hugo  and  Verlaine 
in  the  same  balance  must  be  essentially  impervious 
to  such  magic.  To  those  upon  whom  that  command 
of  Coleridge  is  imperative  it  is  a  question  not  of 
degree,  but  of  kind.  The  words  of  poetry  cease  to 
be  the  same  as  those  of  eloquence,  picturesqueness, 
heroism,  sublimity,  art,  in  verse  ;  that  and  these  are 
not  made  of  the  same  stuff,  and  the  latter,  magnified 
infinitely,  will  never  be  the  former.  It  may  be  that 
because  there  were  fewer  such  magicians  in  French 
verse  than  in  English,  the  judgment  long  accustomed 
to  admirably  written  verse  which  is  not  poetry  ends 
by  mistaking  it  for  poetry.  Yet  French  literature 
has  produced,  if  few,  at  all  events  great  magicians, 
and  it  is  almost  inconceivable  that  a  keen  intelligence 
should  not  feel  by  instinct  that  almost  nothing  Victor 
Hugo  versified  (to  take  as  an  example  once  more  the 
most  monumental  miscarriage  of  rhythmical  language 
in  any  literature)  is  of  the  same  nature  as  what  they 
sang. 

212 


POETRY 

Perhaps  the  real  problem  of  the  French  mind, 
not  of  that  easily  placed  French  mind  which  calls 
the  "  Curses  of  Camille  "  higher  poetry  than  "  Impres- 
sion Fausse,"  but  of  that  more  difficult  to  understand 
which  truly  feels  the  latter  to  be  poetry,  but  also 
honestly  calls  the  former  poetry,  is  whether  it  ever 
has  had  the  concept  of  poetry  as  of  a  thing  in  itself 
and  has  ever  given  it  a  place  radically  apart  in 
literature ;  whether  it  has  ever  accepted  that  poetry 
should  be  cut  off  from  reason  and  should  be  a  reason 
unto  itself,  that  poetry  should  not  essentially  be 
human,  but  might  try  to  be  superhuman,  were  it 
inhuman  in  the  attempt. 

The  Frenchman  is  hardly  to  be  found  who  does 
not  place  Othello  far  above  King  Leai',  a  Mid- 
summer Nighfs  Dream,  The  l^empest ;  it  is  generally 
preferred  of  all  the  purely  human  Shakesperean 
dramas,  it  is  almost  invariably  held  to  be  greater 
than  those  that  are  not  solely  human,  that  are  more 
— or  less — than  human.  King  Lear  is  rarely  under- 
stood :  the  absurdity  of  the  plot,  the  cheerful  accept- 
ance of  the  starting-point  of  the  old  story  and  of 
all  the  ancient  accumulation  of  complicated  and 
useless  intrigue  and  slaughter,  the  heedlessness  of 
the  master  of  dramatic  psychology  in  taking  not 
the  least  pains  to  paint  Regan  and  Goneril  whose 
speeches,  sentiments,  and  actions  are  completely 
interchangeable,  and  in  spending  but  little  even 
upon   Cordelia,  all   this,  which   when   we  read   the 

213 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

play  we  brush  aside,  seems  to  remain  a  stumbling- 
block  to  French  brains.  To  stick  at  such  a  hedge 
appears  to  us  a  little  foolish  ;  they  are  in  the  main 
honestly  incapable  of  clearing  it.  How  could  the 
dramatist  who  drew  the  blackest,  yet  most  real 
villain  of  any  stage,  lago,  have  outlined  Lear's  two 
elder  daughters  with  so  slovenly  a  hand  ?  How 
could  the  master  builder  of  such  dramatic  prepara- 
tion as  that  of  lago's  plot  have  allowed  the  clumsy 
jumble  of  incidents  in  King  I^ear  to  stand  ?  The 
comparison  with  Othello  seems  to  us  useless ;  it  is 
not  to  minds  fed  on  purely  human  poetry.  They 
look  for  psychology  in  the  painting  of  Regan  and 
Goneril,  and  for  humanity  even  in  the  bare  story  of 
the  play.  To  them  it  seems  irrational  that  the  poet 
should  have  cared  as  little  as  we  do  for  the  incidents 
of  his  plot.  They  honestly  regret  that  Kmg  Lear 
should  not  be  a  good  play,  and  believe  that  if  it 
were  it  would  be  a  greater  tragedy,  because  good 
workmanship  never  spoilt  one.  They  have  no 
sympathy  with  the  point  of  view  which  is  ours,  and 
which  was  the  poet's,  that  the  play  in  this  case  is 
nothing  and  the  poetry  everything.  Can  there  be 
the  greatest  poetry  without  perfection  of  human 
psychology  ?  If  Regan  and  Goneril  were  as  well 
drawn  as  lago,  would  not  the  tragedy  have  greater 
poetry  ?  To  them  the  saving  grace  of  poetry  does 
not  seem  as  omnipotent  as  it  does  to  us.  We  feel 
the  poetry  of  King  Lear  to   be   so  great  that  we 

214 


POETRY 

would  hardly  wish  for  the  story  to  be  less  crude  ; 
we  almost  feel  that  the  poet  brushed  it  in  with  a 
wilfully  clumsy  hand  in  order  that  nothing  should 
exist  there  but  the  poetry  which  he  felt.  We  have 
not  the  same  hunger  for  finish  as  the  French  mind 
(an  emancipation  which  we  have  little  cause  to  boast 
about)  and  things  which  grate  upon  it  so  harshly  as 
to  distract  it  may  be  passed  over  by  us  with 
equanimity.  We  should  feel  no  pride  in  that  peace 
of  mind  except  in  very  rare  cases  such  as  that  of 
King  Lear.  There  we  may  call  ourselves  lucky 
that  we  are  able  to  yield  completely  to  poetry, 
and  we  pity  a  mind  which  does  not  conceive 
that  the  poetry  may  be  greater  perhaps  because 
the  psychology  is  less,  or  that  the  poetry  is  so  great 
that  nothing  else  matters.  We  might  like  a  more 
plausible  Regan  and  a  Goneril  a  little  different  in 
villainy  from  her  sister,  or  could  do  without  all  the 
stabbing  and  treacherous  letters.  But  what  does  it 
all  weigh  in  the  balance  with  Lear  in  the  storm, 
with  "  'Gainst  a  head  so  old  and  white  as  this,"  in 
which  surely  a  purer  sense,  as  Mallarme  said,  has 
been  given  to  two  "  AVords  of  the  herd,"  old  and 
white  ? 

The  whole  question  then  is  whether  the  French 
mind  realises  that  poetry  is  a  star  and  dwells  apart. 
I  have  often  thought  that  King  hear  is  a  crucial  test 
to  be  applied  to  doubtful  cases.  M.  Maurice  Maeter- 
linck has  written  one  of  the  finest  appreciations  of 

215 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

King  Lear  extant,  but  he  is  not  a  Frenchman,  and 
what  is  more  he  is  un-French.  To  the  average 
cultured  hterary  French  mind,  the  poetry  of  Lear 
in  the  storm,  of  Lear  mad  and  understanding  at  last 
what  he  never  understood  sane  and  reigning,  of  Lear 
sane  again  and  helpless  (pray  do  not  mock  me), 
finally  mad  once  more  but  with  what  a  different 
madness  ("  should  a  dog,  a  cat,  a  mouse,  have 
life  ? ")  is  not  so  great  that  the  weaknesses  of 
dramatic  construction  and  delineation  in  the  play 
can  be  overcome :  therein  perhaps  is  told  the  whole 
problem  of  the  French  literary  attitude  towards 
poetry. 

Poetry  is  looked  upon  by  the  French  intelligence, 
I  think,  almost  always  to  some  extent  as  a  hand- 
maiden, not  as  her  own  mistress  ;  she  does  not  solely 
rule,  she  serves  also.  She  may  not  lead  reason 
whither  she  will,  reason  must  have  a  consulting  voice. 
She  is  not  a  law  and  an  end  unto  herself,  but  her 
law  is  one  among  other  laws,  and  there  are  other 
ends  to  aim  at  besides  her  own.  The  beauty  of 
poetry  is  to  be  sought,  but  not  solely  and  intoler- 
antly, and  not  at  the  expense  of  other  human  aspira- 
tions ;  or  rather  the  greatest  beauty  of  poetry 
cannot  be  attained  unless  other  aims  are  sought  with 
it,  and  the  highest  poetry  is  not  the  poetry  that  is 
an  end  unto  herself  The  classical  French  mind  un- 
doubtedly holds  that  the  greatest  poetry  must  be  the 
must  human ;  almost  no  French  mind  accepts  that 

21G 


POETRY 

the  greatest  poetry  may  be  the  most  inhuman. 
Perhaps  to  the  EngHsh  mind,  on  the  contrary,  the 
greatest  poetry  precisely  is  the  least  human,  but 
whether  that  be  the  final  English  judgment  or 
not,  it  is  undoubtedly  foreign  to  the  French  intelli- 
gence. 

The  French  mind  does  not  want  poetry  to  take 
it  anywhere  out  of  the  world.  Though  human  as 
well  as  unearthly,  the  poetry  of  King  hear  is  not 
enough  in  a  French  judgment  to  compensate  the 
crudeness  of  the  human  story.  The  unearthly  poetry 
of  Macbeth  captures  French  minds  by  what  there  is 
of  human  meaning  in  it,  not  by  its  unearthliness,  and 
the  poetry  of  The  Tempest  and  of  A  Midsummer 
Nighfs  Dream,  for  example,  is  inferior  because  less 
human.  Any  Englishman  who  has  met  Frenchmen 
eagerly  interested  in  literature  will  remember  having 
often  argued  such  points  with  them.  "  The  intro- 
duction of  supernatural  agencies  into  the  story  of 
Macbeth,  or  rather  the  acceptance  by  the  poet  of  the 
supernatural  agencies  which  he  found  already  crudely 
mixed  with  the  old  tale,  is  supremely  felicitous.  To 
his  wonderful  handling  of  those  agencies  the  tragedy 
owes  half  its  sublimity.  That  none  perceive  more 
clearly  than  we  (say  the  poet's  French  worshippers 
who  yield  to  none  in  their  admiration  of  certain 
aspects  of  his  genius).  Macbeth  without  the  watches 
would  be  shorn  of  half  its  poetic  greatness ;  the 
tragedy   would   remain  great,   but    it   would    be   a 

217 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

pedestrian  tragedy.  The  symbol  of  the  witches  gives 
it  its  wings.  The  play  attains  to  the  highest  poetry, 
because  while  the  earthly  tragedy  is  admirable,  un- 
earthly symbols  are  woven  into  it,  which  are  of  the 
essence  of  sublimity.  The  symbol  is  sublime  because 
it  is  one  with  the  tragedy.  The  witches  by  them- 
selves have  dreadful  grandeur,  but  their  essential 
grandeur  hes  in  their  sway  over  human  actions. 
They  are  bubbles  of  the  earth  but  they  have  an 
awful  power  over  the  earth.  The  fates,  which  are 
man's  own  instincts  and  will  and  weaknesses,  have 
never  been  symbolised  with  equal  splendour  and 
terror.  The  Graiae  fade  away  by  the  side  of  Shake- 
speare's witches.  The  imagination  that  drew  the 
latter  had  had  close  and  startling  visions  of  the 
world's  mysteries.  The  shadow  thrown  by  these 
more  terribly  living  fates  over  men's  actions  gives  the 
tragedy  its  poetry.  The  witches  are  great  poetry 
because  their  witchcraft  rules  human  evil."  Observe 
that,  if  the  tragedy  be  greater  by  poetic  mystery,  the 
mystery  is  great  poetry  because  it  involves  human 
action ;  the  witches  give  the  play  of  Macbeth  poetry, 
but  they  are  poetic  because  they  hover  round  the 
man  Macbeth.  The  unearthly  symbol  is  poetic,  but 
it  is  great  poetry  precisely  because  it  is  a  symbol  of 
earthly  reality.  Would  the  unearthly  be  as  great 
poetry,  were  it  a  sign  only  of  itself?  The  French 
answer  is,  no.  The  unearthly  standing  by  itself  is  a 
dream ;  a  dream  can  never   be  as   great   poetry  as 

218 


POETRY 

reality.  Listen  to  the  comparison  between  Macbeth 
and  The  Tempest :  "  The  symbols  of  Macbeth  are 
terrible,  because  of  their  meaning.  The  supernatural 
agencies  of  The  Tempest  are  in  themselves  poetic, 
but  do  not  reach  the  same  height  of  poetry,  because 
they  melt  into  thin  air,  and  what  is  left  of  them  ? 
No  doubt  our  fancy  can  read  meanings  into  them, 
but  the  point  is  that  it  must  be  our  fancy  that  reads 
of  set  purpose  and  may  read  different  meanings  at 
will.  The  symbol  does  not  force  itself  irresistibly  on 
the  mind,  with  the  inevitableness  of  the  greatest 
symbols.  The  witches  in  Macbeth  command  us  as 
imperiously  as  a  force  of  nature,  they  leave  us  no 
space  for  curious  questions  and  the  play  of  fancy. 
With  Setebos,  Caliban,  Ariel,  our  fancy  plays  and 
must  play ;  they  do  not  rule,  but  serve  our  imagina- 
tion ;  they  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  on,  and 
the  poet's  purpose  was  that  they  should  set  us  free 
to  dream.  Who  has  ever  had  the  time  to  dream 
during  Macbeth  ?  The  reason  is  that  the  symbols 
of  Macbeth  are  the  direct  signs  of  reality,  a  violent 
overwhelming  reahty,  and  that  those  of  The  Tempest 
are  the  signs  only  of  a  dream :  a  dream  can  never 
be  as  great  as  reality.  We  can,  as  well  as  any, 
rejoice  and  shudder  at  Caliban,  smile  impishly  with 
Puck  and  wistfully  with  Ariel.  But  we  cannot  put 
them  among  the  greatest  figments  of  poetry,  because 
they  are  not  of  our  earth.  To  us  our  earth  is  the 
most  interesting  planet  in  the  universe.     Caliban  is 

219 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

inhuman.  Puck  is  amused  to  be  inhuman.  Ariel 
rejoices  in  being  inhuman.  They  are  wonderful, 
often  beautiful  fancies  ;  they  are  not  true  symbols. 
The  witches  of  Macbeth  are  among  the  most  awful 
symbols  which  a  poet  ever  created  for  mankind  ; 
mankind  is  kept  at  arm's  length  by  the  imagination 
of  The  Tempest.  The  greatest  poetry  need  not, 
perhaps,  be  the  most  human,  but  the  greatest  poetry 
cannot  be  inhuman."  Note  the  implication  that  it 
is  poverty  not  wealth  in  a  symbol  to  be  such  that 
fancy  can  read  many  meanings  at  will  into  it.  The 
immediate  and  imperative  symbol  is  the  richer  ;  hence 
the  supernatural  in  Macbeth  is  deeper  than  that  of 
The  Tempest.  This  is  as  much  as  to  posit  that 
mystery  for  its  own  sake  is  not  highly  valuable,  and 
I  think  the  French  intellect  in  general  would  accept 
that  premiss.  Mystery  does  not  command  but  doubly 
serves  ;  it  is  an  instrument  of  poetry  which  herself 
is  not  her  own  mistress.  To  our  instinct,  on  the 
contrary,  Ariel  is  more  wonderful  than  the  witches 
in  Macbeth.  Ariel  is  a  richer  symbol  precisely  be- 
cause the  symbol  has  wings  to  carry  us  away  from 
the  earth.  The  witches  serve  the  tragedy,  Ariel  flies 
beyond  the  story  of  Prospero  and  is  greater  than 
Prospero  himself,  Ariel's  master.  Ariel  to  us  is  more 
wonderful  precisely  because  he  is  calmly  unearthly. 
He  is  not  of  our  earth,  but  belongs,  more  completely 
perhaps  than  any  other  creation  of  any  other  poet,  to 
"fairylands  forlorn."      There  is  something  in  Ariel 

220 


POETRY 

which  seems  to  be  the  very  poetic  spirit  of  English 
thought,  because  in  the  primitive  nursery  rhyme-hke 
words  he  sings,  there  is  the  mystery  of  other  worlds 
than  ours,  and  an  unsaid  immortal  longing.  None  of 
us  who  feels  poetry  has  ever  read  the  parting  of  Ariel 
from  Prospero  without  the  strangest  pang,  and  Ariel, 
ungrateful,  unfeeling,  untender,  glad  only  of  one 
thing,  that  he  is  free  in  the  air  at  last  again,  Ariel 
utterly  inhuman,  leaving  the  man  Prospero  who 
regrets  and  loves  because  he  is  a  man,  Ariel  loving 
nothing  but  air  and  freedom,  Ariel  the  unearthliest 
creation  of  poetry,  is  to  us  one  of  the  most  direct 
visions  a  poet  ever  had  of  the  pure  spirit  of  poetry. 
The  mind  trained  upon  French  literary  traditions 
cannot  understand  Ariel.  I  do  not  isay  that  all 
French  minds  are  so  trained.  But  I  believe  that 
nine  in  ten  of  them  will  call  Prospero  the  poet, 
because  he  is  a  man  with  man's  feelings,  and  Ariel  a 
fancy,  and  will  say  that  Prospero  lives,  while  Ariel 
dies,  after  the  play  is  over.  We  know,  and  Prospero 
himself  well  knows,  that  Prospero  turns  to  dust  when 
the  dream  fades  and  the  curtain  falls,  but  that  Ariel 
is  immortal. 

Moliere  could  not  have  been  English  and  Shelley 
could  not  have  been  French.  The  two,  so  utterly  un- 
like, may  be  taken  as  typical  of  their  national  litera- 
tures, not  in  a  general,  but  in  one  particular  sense. 
Shelley  is  probably  the  most  perfect  example  of  the 
pure  poet  that  any  literature  has  ever  produced.     He 

221 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

is  all  made  of  poetry.  His  life  to  him  can  never 
really  have  been  aught  but  a  dream,  his  poetry  was 
the  reaUty.  He  may  or  may  not  himself  have  under- 
stood that  it  was  so  ;  probably  he  did  deeply  at  times, 
perhaps  often,  understand  himself,  and  at  other  times, 
perhaps  more  seldom  than  we  suppose,  he  whipped 
himself  into  the  belief  that  Hfe  mattered  to  him,  that 
his  own  loves  and  affections  mattered,  and  that  the 
fates  of  other  men,  their  wrongs  and  their  struggles, 
moved  him,  whipped  himself,  in  fact,  into  living. 
But,  at  heart,  he  must  have  often  felt  that  "  icy 
ecstasy  "  which,  in  the  admirably  exact  expression  of 
Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  was  the  real  enthusiasm  that 
filled  him  and  which  was  the  pure  spirit  of  poetry. 
At  heart  he  was  utterly  inhuman,  at  heart  he  was 
Ariel.  It  was  Byron,  the  aristocrat,  the  egoist,  the 
jouisseur,  the  poseur  (the  poseur,  though,  who  died 
at  Missolonghi),  who  was  human,  and  it  was  inhuman 
Shelley  wlio  was  the  democrat  and  the  revolutionist. 
Shelley  was  nothing  but  a  poet,  could  write  nothing 
but  poetry,  could  write  meaningless,  empty  words, 
but  not  words  that  were  not  poetry  ;  he  was  in  cul- 
ture the  accomplished  man  of  letters,  in  temperament 
the  perfect  poet.  English  literature  has  produced 
the  complete  type  of  the  pure  poet,  and  Shelley  is 
national  in  the  sense — not  that,  far  from  it  indeed,  he 
represents  a  national  aspiration — but  that  all  English 
poetry  aims  consciously  or  unconsciously  at  that 
ideal  of  pure,  unearthly,  inhuman  poetry.     He  is  the 

222 


POETRY 

most  perfect  expression  of  the  poetic  spirit  in  English 
literature.  In  French  Hterature,  the  poetic  spirit 
does  not  aim  at  Shelley. 

It  does  not  of  course  aim  solely,  but  I  think  it 
aims  mainly,  at  Molicre.  Moliere  is  the  most  human 
dramatist,  Moliere  is  the  perfect  human  dramatist. 
Shelley  is  the  pattern  of  the  pure  poet,  Moliere  is  the 
model  of  human  playwrights.  No  one  would  ration- 
ally think  of  comparing  Moliere  and  Shelley  with 
one  another,  yet  the  two  are  national  in  the  sense 
that  all  English  poets  remember  more  or  less  Shelley 
in  their  dreams,  and  that  all  French  poets  remember 
more  or  less  Moliere  in  their  judgment.  Shelley  is 
an  ideal  for  English  poetry,  Moliere  a  touchstone  for 
French  poetry.  The  English  poet  says,  "  I  may 
soar  as  high  as  Shelley  " ;  the  French  poet  tells  him- 
self, "  Whithersoever  I  soar,  let  me  not  lose  touch 
with  the  humanity  of  Moliere."  The  one  leads  on, 
the  other  steadies ;  the  one  gives  wings,  the  other 
gives  the  sense  of  reality.  We  have  to  acknowledge 
that  the  most  human  of  dramatists  could  not  have 
been  English.  Almost  no  English  writer  has  the 
spirit  of  Moliere,  and  none  has  his  form.  He  is  the 
supreme  human  dramatist,  who  satirises  without 
extravagance,  moralises  without  preaching,  has 
humour,  but  not  fancy,  draws  characters,  but  does 
not  imagine  them,  lives  marvellously  in  the  world, 
but  never  out  of  it,  has  humanity,  psychological 
insight,  humour,  philosophy,  a  strong  wit  to  back  his 

223 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

philosophy,  and  has  not  poetry.  He  writes  a  lan- 
guage that  for  directness  and  aptness  has  never  been 
equalled,  verse  which  with  equally  astounding  ease 
fits  sharp  satire,  caricature,  philosophising,  mere 
gorgeous  fun,  small  talk,  conversation  which  would 
be  difficult  enough  to  photograph  into  prose  and 
which  it  renders  exactly  without  the  suspicion  of  an 
effort.  He  writes  the  most  consummate  verse  ever 
written,  but  not  poetry.  His  verse  has  never  been 
approached  in  English.  No  literary  instrument  Hke 
it  exists,  so  flexible,  strong,  unobtrusive,  complete, 
and  sufficient.  Celimene,  Alceste,  Chrysale,  Cli- 
tandre,  Henriette,  Tartufe  —  even  Dorine  —  speak 
verse,  as  ^I.  Jourdain  spoke  prose.  Every  line  they 
say  is  their  natural  speech,  and  every  word  is  there 
because  they  meant  to  say  it,  not  because  the  Alex- 
andrine line  required  it.  Alceste  can  row  Celimene, 
Celimene's  courtiers  can  tear  reputations  to  pieces, 
Tartufe  can  preach  and  Elvire  show  him  up,  Chrysale 
can  lay  down  the  axioms  of  the  bourgeois,  Henriette 
can  talk  homely  common  sense,  her  sisters  glorious 
nonsense,  Clitandre  courtly  good  sense,  and  the  stiff, 
unmanageable,  unbending  Alexandrine  line  fits  it  all 
with  the  same  accomplished  ease,  and  without  the 
strain  of  half  a  line.  Even  in  French,  Moli^re's 
miraculous  verse  has  never  been  equalled.  His  spirit 
lives  in  a  hundred  characters  which  are  as  real  to-day 
as  when  lie  drew  them.  Their  like  can  be  found 
neither   in  the  English  drama   nor   in   the   English 

224) 


POETRY 

novel.  The  former  has  produced  no  such  definitely, 
neatly,  and  solely  human  characters ;  the  latter  con- 
tains none  so  broadly  and  typically  human.  The 
English  novel,  at  its  greatest,  has  created  no  such 
universally  human  characters ;  the  greatest  charac- 
ters of  the  English  drama  are  not  so  definitely 
human :  there  is  something  more  than  human  in 
them. 

The  hackneyed  instance  of  the  French  inability 
to  understand  English  poetry,  the  overrating  of 
Byron,  is  also  a  useful  indication  of  the  French  atti- 
tude towards  all  poetry.  Few  French  minds — even 
those  that  understand  their  own  real  poetry  most 
truly — do  not  rank  Byron  above,  and  almost  none 
rank  him  below,  Shelley  and  Keats.  The  last  two 
have  many  true  lovers  in  France,  who  admire  them 
even  translated,  which  seems  almost  a  perversion  of 
worship  to  the  Englishman ;  but  even  such  French- 
men are  taken  in  by  the  eloquence  of  "  Childe 
Harold,"  and  call  "  Manfred  "  a  great  true  poem. 
The  judgment,  obviously  right  to  the  English  mind, 
that  Byron  seldom  wrote  real  poetry  at  all,  and  never 
of  the  greatest,  is  actually  still  put  down  by  many 
French  lovers  of  English  literature  to  inherited  early 
nineteenth-century  English  hypocrisy.  It  would  be 
unfair  to  judge  a  mind's  ability  to  understand  poetry 
by  its  appreciation  of  poetry  in  a  foreign  language, 
however  well  the  language  be  understood,  still  less 
in  a  translation ;  but  Byron's  lasting  and  real  appeal 

225  Q 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

to  the  French  mind — even  to  that  which  under- 
stands Shelley  as  well  as  Verlaine — is  all  the  same 
significant. 

The  general  English  inability  to  understand 
Racine  is  perhaps  equally  meaning.  We  are  true 
lovers  of  Moliere.  We  cannot  call  him  a  poet,  but 
we  call  him  everything  else.  And  we  do  not  call  him 
a  poet  for  the  plain  reason  that,  whatever  the  French 
mind  may  think,  he  is  not  a  poet.  We  do  not  love 
Racine — in  fact,  there  is  no  doubt  he  bores  us.  We 
not  only  never  called  him  a  poet,  but  we  do  not 
honestly  think  him  a  dramatist.  Yet,  whatever  else 
there  be  in  him  as  well,  there  is  some  poetry  in  him — 
little  of  it  and  not  of  the  greatest,  yet  real.  Not  one 
in  a  hundred  English  readers  has  discovered  it,  but  it 
is  there.  Probably  the  way  for  the  English  mind  to 
understand  what  is  solely  French  in  the  French  atti- 
tude towards  poetry  is  to  learn  to  find  the  poetry  of 
Racine.  There  is  little  of  it.  The  French  ear  and 
intelligence  often  mistake  for  real  poetry  in  Racine 
what  is  merely  his  harmonious  numbers  and  deli- 
cately true  imagination.  But  he  has  sometimes  more 
than  these.  There  are  sometimes  echoes  to  his 
usually  closed  thought ;  his  usually  neat  music  some- 
times throws  out  thoughts  beyond  itself.  He  is  a 
man  not  without  mystery.     The  three  lines — 

Dieux,  que  lie  suis-je  assise  a  I'ombre  des  forets. 
Que  ue  puis-je  au  milieu  (rune  noble  poussiere, 
Suivre  do  loin  un  char  courant  dans  la  carriere 

22G 


POETRY 

are  real  poetry.     Of  the  four  lines — 

J'ai  voulu,  devant  vous  exposant  mes  remords. 
Par  un  chemin  plus  lent  descendre  chez  les  morts. 
J'ai  pris,  j'ai  fait  couler  dans  mes  brulantes  veineSj 
Un  poison  que  Mdd^e  apporta  dans  Athenes. 

the  first  is  good  padding,  the  third  is  good  eloquence, 
the  second  and  fourth  are  real  poetry,  not  of  the 
greatest,  but  real.  The  second  might  be  compared 
with  "  After  life's  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well,"  though 
it  is  inferior,  containing  less.  Both  these  lines  of 
Racine  have  some  mysterious  echoes  which  the 
English  mind  and  ear  will  hear  if  they  be  sufficiently 
trained  to  the  order  and  measure  of  sound  and  thought 
which  the  French  poetic  spirit  puts  even  into  its 
mysteries.  Racine  is  the  touchstone  by  which  an 
understanding  of  French  poetry  can  be  tested,  and 
which  will  reveal  whether  the  two  kinds  of  French 
poetry  are  understood,  firstly  that  which  is  poetry  to 
the  French  mind  and  not  to  ours,  and  secondly  that 
which,  while  akin  closely  to  the  former,  yet  is  un- 
doubtedly real  poetry.  The  first  is  neat  and  subtle 
psychology  in  artistic  verse,  the  second  is  almost  the 
same  thought  and  the  same  verse,  with  mystery,  were 
it  but  one  speck  of  mystery,  added.  To  the  English 
mind  that  understands  poetry  at  all  there  is  a  differ- 
ence of  kind  between  the  two  ;  there  is  not  to  many 
French  minds  which  understand  their  own  poetry 
quite  well.  On  this  score  our  quarrel  with  such 
French  minds  will  last,  and  we  could  almost  argue 

227 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

that  we  understand  their  poetry  better  than  they, 
since  we  feel  a  world  of  difference  where  they  feel 
only  a  shade.  But  we  must  learn  also  to  understand 
what  they  call  poetry  and  what  we  do  not ;  it  is 
not  poetry,  but  it  has  every  other  quality  of  art,  and 
no  artist  in  such-like  art  has  excelled  Racine.  In 
the  rare  moments  when  he  leaps  suddenly  to  what 
we  call  and  what  alone  is  real  poetry,  he  remains  still 
the  conscious,  perfect  artist :  more  accurately,  he 
gets  out  of  conscious  art  for  one  instant  and  is  back 
into  it  again.  Racine  thus  is  a  better  touchstone  to 
test  our  understanding  of  French  poetry  than  Ver- 
laine,  for  instance,  who  is  nearer  to  us.  The  real 
poetry  in  both  has  the  same  mysterious  quality : 

Par  uu  chemin  plus  lent  descendre  chez  les  morts, 

is  some  such 

.  ,  .  chose  envoMe 
Qu'on  sent  qui  fuit  d'une  arae  en  allee 
Vers  d'autres  vieux  a.  d'autres  amours. 

But  even  the  real  poetry  of  Racine  has  kinships 
which  Verlaine's  has  not  with  that  other  French 
poetry  which  is  everything  that  is  agreeable,  but  not 
poetry.  Thus,  for  testing  the  French  mind's  appre- 
ciation of  its  own  real  poetry,  the  better  touchstone, 
on  the  contrary,  is  Verlaine,  Racine  is  much  nearer 
to  the  French  mind,  at  least  the  French  mind  since 
the  Renaissance,  than  Verlaine. 

The  whole  quarrel  between  us  and  the  French 
comes  to  this,   that   we   cannot   understand   poetry 

228 


POETRY 

without  mystery,  and  that  they  can  ;  not  only  they 
recognise  a  poetry  of  human  reason  which  we  call  no 
poetry  at  all,  but  the  classical,  perhaps  the  normal, 
French  mind  puts  it  above  the  poetry  of  mystery 
which  we  call  the  only  real  poetry.  Among  their 
own  poets  Baudelaire  is  commonly  put  above  Verlaine 
because  although 

Le  poete  est  semblable  au  prince  des  nuees, 
Ses  ailes  de  geant  I'empechent  de  marcher, 

he  is  not  less  sure-footed  because  of  his  wings  :  Ver- 
laine either  flew  or  hobbled.  We  should  say  that 
when  Baudelaire  had  mystery  he  equalled  Verlaine, 
and  that 

O  mon  enfant,  ma  sceur, 
Songe  k  la  douceur.  .  .  . 

or, 

Nous  aurons  des  lits  pleins  d'odeurs  leg^res, 

are  such  words  that  having  heard  them 

.  .  .  notre  ame  depuis  ce  temps  tremble  et  s'etonne. 

whereas 


Les  amants  des  prostituees 
Sent  heureux,  dispos  et  repus. 


or, 


Lorsque  par  un  decret  des  puissances  supremes, 
Le  poete  apparait  en  ce  monde  ennuye.  .  .  . 

are  wonderful,  but  not  magic  words. 

The  Enghsh  mind  should  be  taught  to  understand 
the  particular  qualities  of  the  French  poetry  which 
we  rightly  do  not  call  poetry.  No  advice  can  be 
given  to  that  French  mind  which  does  not  understand 

229 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

the  poetry  of  mystery,  for  mystery  cannot  be  taught. 
Any  Enghsh  mind  that  understands  poetry  at  all  has, 
therefore,  the  advantage  of  such  French  minds;  it 
has  something  to  learn,  they  can  learn  nothing. 

France  has  brought  forth  some  real  poetry  and 
much  perfect  verse,  England  much  more  real  poetry 
and  almost  no  perfect  verse.  Since  the  Renaissance 
real  poetry  has  been  a  beautiful  accident  in  French 
literature.  After  the  ghastly  blunder  of  French 
romanticism,  French  literature  in  the  last  quarter  of 
the  nineteenth  century  with  the  symbolist  movement 
aimed  more  at  real  poetry  and  less  at  perfect  verse 
than  it  had  since  the  Renaissance,  but  it  scored  not  very 
many  hits  for  a  prodigious  number  of  shots.  Having 
given  up  writing  perfect  verse  the  French  poet  was  a 
poet  a  la  Whitman,  and  for  one  line  of  real  poetry, 
wrote  ten  flabby  lines  of  not  even  verse.  Even  M. 
Emile  Verhaeren,  when  he  is  not  a  great  poet,  is  less 
than  a  versifier.  A  Theophile  Gautier  (who  as  a 
versifier  was  not  of  course  a  romantique  at  all)  never 
writes  real  poetry,  but  almost  never  writes  an  imper- 
fect line  of  verse.  Was  the  French  mind  after  all 
right  to  aim  after  the  Renaissance  at  perfect  verse, 
not  real  poetry  ? 

Real  poetry  is  more  natural  to  the  English  than 
to  the  French  language.  Ingenious  verse  which 
would  but  pass  muster  in  France  ranks  high  in 
England,  the  standard  of  mere  handicraft  is  much 
higher   in   the   former  than  in   the  latter  language. 

230 


POETRY 

There  is  no  teaching  real  poetry,  but  Enghsh  work- 
manship would  bear  much  improving.  This  is  only 
saying  that  the  English  are  the  poets,  and  the  French 
the  prose  writers  of  the  world's  literature.  Poetry  is 
high  and  seldom  reached  ;  the  art  of  prose,  in  verse 
as  well  as  in  prose,  is  lower,  but  the  French  have 
often  reached  its  summit. 


231 


PROSE 


XII 

PROSE 

The  differences  between  English  and  French  prose 
would  be  worth  studying.  We  might  find  in  them 
a  reflection  of  differences  between  the  national 
characters.  May  it  not  be  first  of  all  characteristic 
of  the  two  peoples  that  the  Enghsh  has  been  better 
at  poetry,  and  the  French  better  at  prose  ?  That  the 
former  has  sung  and  the  latter  talked  best  ? 

The  bad  prose  of  the  two  peoples  is  perhaps  as 
characteristic  of  them  as  their  good.  The  French 
and  the  EngHsh  have  different  ways  of  writing  badly. 
Indeed  the  lesser  \dces  of  one  language  are  sometimes 
almost  the  virtues  of  the  other.  The  greater  are  com- 
mon to  the  two,  but  the  worst  of  one  are  never  the 
worst  of  the  other.  The  worst  French  style  is  the 
"ecriture  artiste,"  the  worst  English  is  well-oiled 
eloquence.  The  former  is  not  as  bad  in  English,  the 
latter  not  as  bad  in  French.  French  "  artist- writing  " 
is  florid  and  pretentious,  but  it  is  more  than  that ;  it 
apes  and  mocks  one  of  the  best  virtues  of  good  French 
writing :  painting  quickly  and  truly  a  new  outward 
but  essential  relation  between  things.     Good  French 

235 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

writing  about  a  sunset  or  a  ploughman,  a  boulevard 
cafe  or  a  street  fight,  will  seize  upon  a  relation  between 
this  and  that  colour  in  the  sky,  between  the  man's 
plod  and  his  horse's  tramp,  between  house  and  cus- 
tomer, between  street  and  fighters,  and  so  put  it  that 
the  merely  necessary  words  prove  it  to  be  the  one 
relation  we  were  waiting  for  that  we  might  see  reality. 
French  "  artist- writing  "  seizes  upon  relations  by  the 
thousand,  but  they  are  all  false.  The  red  sun  sets 
with  a  last  throb  like  a  dying  passionate  heart.  The 
lewd  ploughshare  turns  the  voluptuous  loam  with  a 
scream  of  conquering  delight.  The  grizzly  cafe's 
maw  grinds  dipsomaniacs  with  the  white  teeth  of  its 
marble  tables.  The  chaste  street  looks  blue-eyedly 
down  upon  the  scum  bubbling  with  spite  at  its  foot. 
The  darhng  sin  of  "  artist-writing  "  is  the  invention 
of  figures  which  cannot  represent  the  things.  The 
artist  in  words  paints  with  one  violent  image  which 
is  true ;  the  imitator  copies  the  violence,  not  the 
truth.  The  French  artist  makes  a  single  and  true 
aspect  of  a  thing  seem  startlingly  new  to  us  ;  "  artist- 
writing  "  grubs  for  new  but  complicated  and  untrue 
ways  of  looking  at  the  thing. 

This  is  not  so  much  so  in  bad  English  writing. 
The  worst  is  not  the  most  twisted  and  far-fetched. 
The  reason  is  that  the  virtue  of  the  vice  is  not  a 
common  English  one  ;  expressing  suddenly  a  violently 
fresh  relation  between  things  is  a  more  French  gift. 
An    English    equivalent   talent   would    be    that    of 

23G 


PROSE 

expressing  the  nicest  shades  with  subtle  accuracy  and 
completeness,  but  this  has  not  notably  brought  forth 
bad  copyists.  Close  shades  give  the  imitator  much 
more  trouble  than  clashing  colours.  There  is  of 
course  some  English  "  artist- writing,"  but  not  much, 
and  it  is  so  raw  that  the  French  is  almost  the  real 
thing  beside  it,  and  that  it  is  not  an  important  type 
of  bad  English  writing.  What  is  that  is  the  easy 
running  machine  of  which  every  part  has  been 
polished  by  earlier  use.  The  mechanic  has  only  put 
the  parts  together,  and  when  it  all  goes  without  a 
hitch  he  is  proud  of  it.  The  French  use  the  word 
"  cliches "  ten  times  more  often  than  we  "  stereo- 
typed," but  the  thing  is  extremely  English.  The 
page  "  reads  smoothly,"  a  few  shy  and  lonely  words 
tack  one  ready-made  phrase  to  the  other,  the  eye 
hailing  so  many  "  familiar  landmarks  "  travels  quickly 
to  the  end,  and  has  understood  at  a  glance  what  the 
page  was  meant  to  mean.  But  the  page  has  been  a 
great  squandering  and  slighting  of  words.  The  words 
have  been  spoilt  and  their  meaning  lost,  fewer  words 
husbanded  with  more  care  and  valued  with  more 
deference  would  have  meant  more.  Thought  has 
been  scamped,  ready-made  phrases  dishonoured  by 
use  have  carried  the  patchwork  writer  on,  and  he 
finished  his  mosaic  before  he  thought  what  the  pieces 
meant  to  the  first  man  who  made  them.  Words  want 
respect ;  they  serve  well  the  writer  who  honours  them, 
but  they  pay  out  the  one  who  is  oflliand  with  them. 

237 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

The  bulk  of  "  serious  "  English  writers,  who  wish 
to  impart  knowledge  and  who  think  of  the  matter 
which  they  have  to  convey  and  the  form  into  which 
they  put  it  as  of  two  separate  things,  belong  to  this 
class  of  patchworkers.  That  is  why  this  kind  of  work 
can  be  classed  first  as  the  worst  English  writing.  It 
exists  in  French  as  well,  but  it  is  not  the  type  of  the 
worst  French  writing  for  two  reasons.  The  "serious" 
French  writer,  to  begin  with,  writes  more  seldom 
"  seriously,"  and  in  the  second  place  when  he  does  he 
is  taken  less  seriously.  Piecing  together  a  mosaic  of 
stock  phrases  less  often  satisfies  him,  and  he  more 
often  understands  the  use  of  style.  When  he  does 
not,  he  imposes  upon  people  less  than  he  would  in 
England  ;  even  popular  opinion  is  more  chary  of  dis- 
tinguishing between  matter  and  form,  and  hesitates 
to  judge  that  a  book  is  instructive  because  it  is  badly 
written. 

English  poUtical  language  works  havoc  in  English 
writing  ;  it  is  only  an  example  but  it  is  the  chief 
example  of  the  patchwork  of  platitudes.  French 
political  language  is  often  very  bad,  but  it  spoils  less 
French  writing  than  the  English  spoils  English.  A 
bad  French  writer  copies  badly  the  artist  in  writing, 
the  bad  English  copies  well  the  mechanic.  French 
journeymen  in  machine-made  political  verbiage  taint 
only  their  natural  fellows  ;  the  English  pervert  green- 
horns of  all  sorts.  Their  public  credit  is  much 
greater  here  than  there.     There  they  are  kept  in  a 

238 


PROSE 

world  of  their  own  with  which  real  writers  have  no 
acquaintance  and  their  language  is  not  looked  upon 
as  a  language  at  all  by  those  who  know.  A  great 
deal  of  political  word  spinning  goes  on  in  French, 
but  it  has  no  influence  on  literature.  The  equivalent 
thing  here  has  a  recognised  standing ;  it  is  the 
standard  style  for  the  ordinary  political  biography, 
contemporary  sociological  study,  essays  on  statesman- 
ship, for  the  newspaper  political  leader  which  retains 
its  uncanny  hold  upon  the  British  public.  A  cheap 
but  clear  example  of  the  difference  between  the  worst 
French  and  the  worst  English  writing  is  this :  the 
Paris  newspaper  runs  to  short  stories  in  the  "  ecriture 
artiste,"  the  London  newspaper  in  any  important 
moment  rises  to  an  able  column  of  patchwork. 

The  worst  French  prose  is  better  than  the  worst 
English.  It  can  be  more  violently,  but  it  cannot  be 
as  timidly  bad ;  it  is  writing  gone  very  wrong,  the 
English  is  not  writing  at  all.  The  most  virulent 
French  "  Ecriture  artiste  "  is  a  frantic  perversion  of  the 
principle  that  the  first  thing  that  matters  in  writing 
is  how  you  write  ;  this  startlingly  new  axiom  has  not 
yet  been  heard  of  by  the  worst  English  writing.  The 
fallacy  that  matter  and  form  are  separable  is  more 
English  than  French.  Perhaps,  in  the  art  of  writing, 
words  are  ideas :  the  French  writer  has  more  often 
thought  so  than  the  English. 

Can  a  man  have  ideas  which  he  cannot,  but 
another  could  put  into  words  ?     Is  there  a  great  mass 

239 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

of  men  who  cannot  say  what  they  want  or  of  men 
who  have  nothing  to  say  ?  By  writing  badly  does  a 
man  prove  that  what  he  thinks  is  not  worth  writing 
about  or  that  whatever  he  may  think  he  cannot  write 
it?  Can  thought  fit  to  be  expressed  by  the  art  of 
writing  be  given  and  the  ability  to  express  it  be 
denied  ?  Or  does  not  the  want  of  the  ability 
prove  the  want  of  the  thought?  Style,  then,  is 
thought. 

The  startling  new  truth  that  in  judging  a  written 
page  the  first  thing  to  judge  is  how  it  is  written 
applies  not  only  obviously  to  the  page  that  means 
first  of  all  to  be  a  work  of  the  art  of  writing,  but  also 
to  the  page  that  means  to  be  something  else  first  of 
all.  The  idea  that  writing  is  a  box  into  which  to  put 
thought  and  that  the  box  at  the  user's  choice  may 
be  of  deal  while  the  contents  are  precious  stones,  is 
absurd.  If  words  be  used  to  express  thought,  the 
words  must  matter.  If  lines,  colours,  shapes,  or 
musical  sounds  be  used,  we  judge  them  first :  no  one 
dreams  of  saying  "  the  painting  of  that  picture  is  bad, 
the  thought  in  it  is  good ; "  "  that  sonata  is  full  of 
thought,  but  it  is  bad  music."  When  we  say  that  a 
piece  of  music  or  of  painting  has  ideas  badly  ex- 
pressed, we  mean  that  some  ideas  in  the  work  are 
well  expressed  and  that  the  author  (we  infer)  may 
liave  had  other  ideas  simultaneously  which  he  failed 
to  express.  Yet  it  is  often  said  of  an  author,  "he 
has  thought  of  his  own,  but  he  has  no  style."     This 

240 


PROSE 

is  a  misconception  which  is  much  less  French  than 
EngHsh.  Words,  unlike  colour,  line,  shape,  musical 
sounds,  are  used  by  everybody,  and  every  man  thinks 
he  understands  them  ;  they  cannot,  therefore,  be 
exactly  likened  to  the  former,  because  they  are  not 
solely  material  in  the  artist's  hand.  But  do  they  not 
become  such  material  when  used  for  any  writing 
worthy  to  be  called  writing  ?  Is  not  then  the  writer's 
material  equivalent  to  that  of  the  painter,  the  musical 
composer,  the  sculptor  ?  The  arrangement  of  words 
becomes  as  essential  as  that  of  line,  colour,  shape, 
sounds.  Finally,  in  real  writing,  form  and  matter, 
style  and  thought  are  inseparable.  This  truism  is 
much  more  familiar  to  French  than  to  English 
writers. 

The  best  French  prose  and  the  best  EngHsh  prose 
are  more  Uke  than  the  worst  French  and  English, 
but  they  are  unlike.  The  best  French  prose  yet 
written  is  the  most  simplified,  the  English  is  not. 
An  absolutely  true  outUne  is  the  image  of  the  former, 
not  of  the  latter.  The  best  French  prose  yet  written 
puts  an  abstraction  completely  in  the  fewest  possible 
words,  paints  a  picture  wholly  with  only  just  the 
sufficient  touches.  Its  expression  of  an  abstract 
thought  is  perfect :  every  associated  idea  that  was 
not  essential — let  alone  an  ornament — has  been 
lopped  off;  not  one  root  upon  which  the  trunk 
depends  has  been  harmed.  We  have  a  skeleton  of 
the  tree,  but  absolutely  all  of  the  tree    that  it   is 

241  R 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

useful    for    the  reasoning   eye  to   see.      No    other 
abstract  writing  equals  the  French  in  clearness  and 
precision.     No  other  picturesque  writing  equals  the 
French  in  clearness  and  precision,     It  draws  cheese- 
paringly,  grudging  every   stroke.     One  more  might 
add   a   good    detail,   but   it   would    overlap   and   is 
blotted  out:    better  a  blank  than  a  line  too  much. 
The  picture  (it  is  a  steel  engraving)  is  finished  the 
moment  we  recognise  it.     If  one  stroke  shows  it  to 
us,  then  one  stroke  will  do,  for  another  might  go  just 
too  far  and  slur  the  outline.     We  must  see  the  one 
picture  perfectly,  but  guess  at  no  other.   The  problem 
for  the  best  picturesque  French  writing  always  is  to 
paint  so  far  and  no  further,  to  show  us  the  thing 
reaUy  and  no  other  thing,  to  call  up  a  true  vision,  but 
defined,  and  the  more  strongly  true  that  it  is  the 
more  sharply  defined. 

The  best  English  prose  comes  to  the  thought  and 
the  picture  from  the  opposite  end.  That  we  may 
understand,  it  does  not  simplify  but  complicates.  It 
looks  all  round  the  thought,  and  perceives  and  de- 
scribes every  byway  leading  to  the  thought ;  the 
approaches  are  made  familiar  to  us,  we  are  led  step 
by  step,  we  are  insensibly  brought  to  the  goal ;  as 
for  the  goal  itself,  we  must  make  our  own  last  effort 
to  get  there,  we  are  never  planked  down  hard  upon 
it.  The  thought  in  itself  is  not  clearly  said  ;  the  aids 
to  it  are  suggested  :  when  it  comes  finally  to  putting 
the  essential  abstraction  clearly  and  finally  the  best 

242 


PROSE 

English  prose  often  fails.  Even  the  best  English 
prose  is  not  good  at  biting  out  a  naked  thought  with 
one  clear  cut  line. 

It  does  not  put  an  abstract  thought  as  clearly  as 
the  French  ;  it  does  not  draw  the  same  sharp  picture, 
it  draws  sometimes,  but  rarely,  a  more  suggestive,  if 
a  more  blurred.     It  never  attains  to  the  same  clear- 
ness and  precision  either  in  writing  where  clearness 
and  precision  are  everything  or  in  writing  where  they 
are  not  everything.      It  reflects  the  English  mind, 
fond  of  incoherent  things  and  afraid  of  the  composing 
idea.     That  English  thought  derived  from  reason  and 
English  writing  that    appeals   to    reason   have   this 
double  character  scarcely  needs  proof     The  English 
greater  liking  for  induction  than  for  deduction,  for 
working  up  from  facts  rather  than  down  from  theory 
is  evident.     English  abstract  writing  often  works  up 
from  the  facts  and  stops  then  short,  leaving  the  theory 
to  grow  by  itself.     The  French  never  does  so  :  it  had 
rather  have  a  theory  with  not  a  fact  to  stand  on  than 
no  theory;  the  English  if  it  had  to  choose  would 
prefer  facts  with  no  theory  to  fit  them.      That  in 
thought  derived  from  feeling  and  in  writing  which 
appeals  to  feeling  the  English  mind  is  also  fonder  of 
independent  things  and  more  afraid  of  the  organising 
idea  than  the  French  is  less  obvious  but   as  true. 
English  writing  from  imagination  follows  the  same 
bent  as  EngHsh  writing  from  reason.     As  the  latter 
starts  from   disconnected  postulates,  so   the  former 

243 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

begins  with  random  details  of  the  picture.  If  it 
paints  men  or  a  man,  it  looks  not  down  from  the 
general  but  up  from  the  particular.  A  twitch  of  the 
man's  face,  a  twist  of  his  gait,  a  hitch  of  his  clothes, 
a  trick  of  his  speech,  a  kink  in  his  mind,  are  first 
caught  and  put  down.  Men  together  are  seen  from 
successive  corners  of  the  market-place,  a  signboard  is 
copied  here,  another  there,  the  wares  of  first  one 
counter  then  another  are  described,  the  talk  of  three 
gossips  set  down,  then  the  talk  of  three  more  and  of 
three  more  after  that,  one  wife's  tale,  one  husband's 
tale  is  told,  then  another  wife's  and  another  husband's. 
The  painting  of  a  sentiment  is  begun  in  the  same 
way,  from  the  fringe.  The  offshoots  are  shown,  the 
tip  of  a  leaf  here  and  there  is  drawn  minutely,  the 
tree  trunk  often  is  left  in  shadow. 

None  of  the  best  French  writing  but  what  goes 
the  other  way  about.  It  seizes  the  soul  of  the  man 
or  of  the  crowd  first ;  the  silhouette  of  the  man 
and  the  crowd  come  afterwards.  The  sentiment  is 
expressed  first  of  all,  its  bye-products  are  dealt  with 
afterwards.  The  details  painted  in  have  been  chosen 
because  they  fitted  in  with  the  picture,  not  for  their 
own  sake  because  they  suggested  a  picture.  Tricks 
of  character  explain  the  character ;  the  character  is 
not  suggested  by  its  tricks.  A  French  Mrs.  Micawber 
(if  there  could  be  one),  who  never  would  desert  Mr. 
Micawber,  would  say  so  because  she  was  Mrs.  Micaw- 
ber ;  she  would  not  be  Mrs.  Micawber  because  she  said 

244 


PROSE 

so.  An  English  Bel  Ami  (can  you  imagine  one?)  would 
look  the  Bel  Ami  to  begin  with,  and  after  that  we 
might  have  to  guess  whether  he  were  the  Bel  Ami  to 
the  core.  The  best  French  writing  that  makes  some 
outward  relation  between  things  seem  startlingly  new 
gets  at  that  relation  from  the  inside  ;  it  was  suddenly 
seen  to  fit  the  scheme  of  the  things.  The  best  English 
writing  that  is  good  at  subtle  shading  was  attracted 
by  the  shading  before  seeing  the  thing  in  itself.  The 
best  English  writing  that  is  Hke  the  French  in  that  it 
is  good  at  sudden  impressions  is  unlike  it  because  it 
gets  at  the  impression  from  the  outside,  not  the  inside. 
Dickens  impressionism  and  Meredith  impressionism, 
which  are  very  different,  are  yet  alike  and  both  very 
English  in  that,  the  one  man  hurtling  and  the  other 
picking  his  way,  both  travel  towards  the  centre  of 
their  subject,  not  from  it.  The  English  artist  in 
writing  always  gives  one  the  idea  that  his  subject  is 
outside  him ;  he  chanced  upon  it,  looked  round  it, 
and  tells  us  all  about  it.  The  French  artist  did  not 
chance  upon  his  subject,  but  chose  it,  perhaps  with 
some  care,  and  his  subject  has  ceased  to  astonish  him 
when  he  writes  about  it.  Dickens  impressionism  is 
both  violently  new  and  violently  true,  but  it  is  true 
as  fancy  is,  not  as  a  fact  noted  down  is :  it  has  the 
truth  of  poetry.  Meredith  impressionism  is  violent 
subtlety.  Neither  proceeds  by  the  method  of  French 
writing,  though  Dickens  in  some  ways  by  his  im- 
mediateness  (an  opinion  which  will  revolt  many)  is 

245 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

more  French  than  Meredith.  For  both  are  not  logical, 
but  impulsive,  and  the  truth  of  what  they  say  depends 
on  the  truth  of  their  rough  and  sudden  sketches  of 
outhne  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  of  their 
inner  fancy ;  it  does  not  depend  upon  the  truth  of  an 
inner  structural  plan  ;  half  of  it  is  in  prose  the  truth 
of  poetry,  not  the  truth  of  prose. 

What  sometimes  seems  to  be  the  sketchiness  and 
skimpiness  of  French  imaginative  prose  is  often  found 
by  the  discerning  eye  to  be  the  result  of  careful  build- 
ing. The  same  eye  wiU  discover  that  what  can  be 
more  truly  called  loose  and  thin  is  on  the  contrary 
the  redundant  suggestiveness  of  even  some  of  the  best 
English  writing.  The  former  may  have  been  too 
much  boiled  down,  but  however  dry  the  extract,  there 
is  always  some  of  the  beef  left  in  it ;  the  latter  may 
be  all  trimmings  and  no  meat.  Maupassant  is  some- 
times pared  and  pruned  down  to  a  stick,  but  in 
Meredith  sometimes  one  cannot  see  the  tree  for  the 
leaves.  One  sometimes  wishes  M.  Anatole  France 
thought  as  subtly  as  Mr.  Henry  James,  but  one  more 
often  wishes  Mr.  Henry  James  wrote  like  M.  Anatole 
France.  To  suggest  is  naturally  the  aim  of  both 
writings,  but  the  ways  of  suggesting  are  different ;  at 
their  best  the  one  does  it  with  the  fewest  and  most 
careful  touches,  the  other  with  random  but  true  and 
delicate  dabs.  Both  have  their  perils,  but  the  former 
is  on  the  whole  safer.  It  will  never  be  as  dangerous 
to  be  barren  as  it  is  to  be  fruitful,  never  as  dangerous 

24G 


PROSE 

to  sum  up  as  it  is  to  develop.  The  worst  fate  that 
can  happen  to  synthetic  French  writing  (and  it  does 
happen)  is  that  it  should  make  a  mountain  of  a  mole- 
hill; analytic  EngUsh  writing  burrowing  here  and 
there  may  get  lost  in  a  rabbit  warren.  Maupassant 
and  Flaubert  are  much  safer  to  copy  than  Dickens 
and  Thackeray,  and  actually  easier  to  copy  well, 
though  perhaps  more  difficult  for  the  bad  copyist. 

Fancy  may  seem  easier,  but  it  is  more  difficult  to 
imitate  well  than  reason.  It  is  only  too  easy  to 
splash  the  canvas,  but  the  difficulty  is  to  find  the 
right  colours  when  the  painting  of  the  impression  is 
begun  from  the  fringe.  If  a  logical  composition  be 
started  from,  it  will  at  least  hang  together  even  if 
worked  out  weakly.  In  impressionism,  which  is  a 
more  English  thing  than  French  in  writing,  though 
popular  opinion  often  thinks  the  contrary,  and  which 
is  met  with  in  English  writers  who  died  before  the 
word  was  invented  by  the  French,  half  failure  is 
much  more  fatal  than  in  the  writing  of  reason. 
Trying  to  paint  like  that  pure  impressionist  Dickens, 
and  faihng,  dabbing  the  colours  on,  not  instantly 
right,  as  he  did  when  he  painted  Betsy  Trotwood, 
but  wrong  (as  he  sometimes  did)  is  an  incompar- 
ably worse  fiasco  than  attempting  to  build  up  a 
geometrical  tale  like  Maupassant's  and  not  bringing 
it  off.  False  impressionism  is  less  than  nothing ; 
when  logical  writing  is  bad,  at  least  the  logic  of  it 
remains.     A  bad  imitation  of  Madame  Bovary  would 

247 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

be  a  frightful  thing,  but  a  bad  imitation  of  "  One 
of  our  Conquerors "  would  be  worse.  Flaubert's 
elaborate  masonry  looks  more  formidable  at  first  to 
the  copyist  than  JNleredith  waywardly  throwing  his 
materials  together,  but  let  the  copyist  who  has  tried 
give  us  his  opinion. 

The  best  French  prose  is  the  best  prose,  but  the 
best  English  prose  has  a  strain  of  poetry  in  it.  None 
is  as  true,  firm,  sharp,  neat  as  the  former,  and  the 
latter  has  not  yet  come  near  to  the  same  finish.  But 
the  best  Enghsh  prose  (there  is  not  much  of  it)  is  not 
altogether  prose ;  the  best  French  is  solely  prose. 
In  English  prose  at  its  highest  there  is  that  some- 
thing which  carries  it  yet  higher ;  French  prose  gets 
to  the  summit  of  prose  but  not  beyond. 

Some  reflection  of  national  character  may  be 
found  here.  Perhaps  we  are  nearly  all  of  us  bad 
at  prose,  but  a  very  few  of  us  are  good  at  poetry. 
Perhaps  the  French  are  the  only  prose  writers,  and 
two  or  three  of  us  are  the  only  poets. 


248 


CHILDKEN 


XIII 

CHILDREN 

Even  the  extraordinary  Englishman  who  has 
observed  the  EngUsh  has  not  always  perceived  that 
"Alice  in  Wonderland"  and  "Through  the  Looking- 
glass  "  is  almost  the  most  English  modern  thing  ever 
done,  and  that  no  other  people  could  have  thought  of 
doing  it.  Even  he  has  not  understood  that  English 
children  are  the  only  real  children  and  that  the 
English  people  is  the  only  real  child-people.  Has  he 
remarked  that  English  child-poetry  is  the  greatest, 
and  that  England  is  the  land  of  nursery  rhyme,  that 
our  having  sung  "  A  Frog  he  would  a- wooing  go,"  and 
"  Cock  me  carry,  Kitty  and  I,"  and  our  being  able  to 
say  to-day  with  delight,  "  'Twas  brillig  and  the  slithy 
toves  "  or  "  I  doubt  it,  said  the  carpenter,"  is  impor- 
tant ?  In  folklore  English  nursery  rhyme  holds  a  great 
place  ;  more  than  that,  it  is  not  past  but  present. 

The  English  child  is  the  only  real  child  that  has 
its  own  world,  from  which  grown-ups  are  banned. 
The  Enghsh  nursery  is  a  very  fine  English  thing.  It 
is  a  serious  and  earnest  world  which  no  one  who  is 
not  serious  can  enter.    The  absurdities  of  adults  must 

251 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

cease  at  the  threshold ;  a  grown-up  can  come  in  only 
if  he  drops  them  and  is  grave.     AVhen  doggie  who 
has  been  sitting  stiffly  these  three  weeks  in  his  same 
chair  is  remembered  and  given  a  bun,  the  nursery  is 
not  making  believe  ;  it  had  forgotten  doggie  and  now 
suddenly  makes  the  right  amends.     The  doggie  who 
can  walk  and  talk  and  make  the  bun  disappear  is  not 
really  different   from   the   doggie  who  can  only  sit 
stiffly  and  stare  at  the  bun ;  both  must  have  the  bun. 
The  stuff  doggie,  having   been   offered  the  bun,  is 
unmoved.     "  This  doggie  no  alive.  Papa  ?  "     He  has 
to  agree.     "  Papa,  why  no  make  this  doggie  alive  ?  " 
Ah,  why  ?   What  are  you  going  to  bed  with  to-night  ? 
*'  Going  bed  wiv  el'phant."     This  has  been  decided 
beyond  question.     What  are  you  going  to  bed  with  ? 
"  Torts."    To-night  is  for  the  hve  tortoise  and  the 
stuff  elephant ;  another  may  be  for  *'  nuvver  el'phant,'* 
hence   a  fight,   as   there   is   only   one.      At   3   a.m. 
"  Nurse,  lobster  in  bed."     "  Go  to  sleep.     Lobsters 
never  come  into  beds."    "Nurs-ee,  no  stay  in  bed, 
lobster  there."    Once   a  week  for  two   months   the 
nursery,  never  having  seen,  or  to  any  one's  knowledge 
heard  of,  a  lobster,  dreams  that  it  is  in  bed  with  one. 
Four  year  old  gets  up  first,  walks  to  three  year  old, 
wakes  him  and  says :   "  Want  no  fighting  to-day." 
Why  especially  to-day  ?     But  tlie  determination  fell 
through.     Four  year  old  comes  home  with  the  news 
that  he  has  found  four  little  sisters  in  a  house  quite 
near.     All  four  are  called  Maud.     Three  year  old  has 

252 


CHILDREN 

four  little  sisters  too,  other  ones.    All  these  four  are 
called  Ann. 

The  gravity  of  the  English  child  is  a  precious 
thing,  and  perhaps  especially  English.  The  English 
child  of  two  gravely  walking  up  to  his  father  to 
shake  hands,  with  "  goo'-bye,"  before  going  out  with 
nurse,  is  very  delightful.  The  father,  if  he  is  a  decent 
father,  shakes  hands  as  gravely,  and  hopes  the  walk 
will  be  a  pleasant  one.  The  nursery  is  its  own 
world,  parents  and  other  grown-ups  enter  there  by 
leave,  not  by  right.  Perhaps  only  EngHsh  parents 
feel  that  really.  Peter,  who  is  seven,  has  his  own 
garden  plot.  His  sisters  set  pinks  in  theirs  ;  he  digs 
for  a  treasure  in  his.  Almost  every  morning  his 
father,  being  a  decent  father,  asks  Peter  whether  he 
has  hopes  of  finding  the  treasure  shortly.  Some 
mornings  Peter  is  hopeful,  others  gloomy.  Peter 
and  his  father  perhaps  are  only  English. 

The  child's  imagination  is  almost  the  whole  child, 
and  no  one  who  cannot  share  it  can  know  the  child. 
The  child's  laugh  is  precious,  but  easy  to  understand. 
When  not  to  laugh  is  a  harder  knowledge ;  to  laugh 
at  a  child  is  of  course  unforgiven.  The  old  saying,  in 
a  deeper  sense  than  it  is  usually  taken  in,  is  always 
true ;  the  real  reverence  due  to  children  includes  a 
restraint  in  their  parents.  They  can  hardly  walk 
before  they  command  wonderfully  respect  for  their 
own  small  souls.  With  children  it  is  the  wrong  thing 
to  be  hail-fellow-well-met;   they  cannot  do  without 

253 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

deference,  and  especially  hate  jocular  familiarity. 
The  right  sort  of  parents  feel  awe  inwardly  before 
their  children,  and  outwardly  show  some  shyness 
towards  them.  Perhaps  this  shade  of  restraint 
between  parents  and  children  is  particularly  English, 
and  it  is  only  Enghsh  fathers  that  would  not  presume 
upon  a  child  of  three,  and  only  English  children  that, 
little  animals  though  they  be,  just  perceive  that  they 
are  abeady  little  persons  for  their  father.  The  French 
father  and  mother,  especially  the  mother,  are  admir- 
able, but  that  one  quality  of  restraint  is  what  they 
lack. 

There  is  perhaps  no  mother  exactly  like  the 
French  mother  in  the  world.  It  is  she  who  really 
feels,  what  G.  K.  Chesterton  said  somewhere,  that 
birth  already  is  a  separation.  She  yearns  to  make 
her  child  flesh  of  her  flesh  again  ;  she  is  always  trying 
to  bridge  over  the  separation.  Her  child  still  is 
herself,  she  never  really  is  delivered  of  it.  She  is  not 
self-sacrificing,  devoted,  tender,  for  one  is  not  any  of 
these  things  to  a  limb  of  one's  own  body.  She  and 
her  child  are  to  her  the  same  thing.  It  is  only  the 
child  that  may  go  from  her  and  amaze  her,  she  is 
always  with  her  child.  A  maniac  of  a  Paris  murderer 
was  tracked,  trapped  and  killed  in  a  hole  like  a  rat, 
with  all  the  world  watching  ;  a  brutal  Paris  journalist 
interviewed  his  mother  and  she  said ;  "  After  all,  he 
was  my  son,"  If  I  had  dared,  I  would  have  spoken 
with   her.     She   was  an  old,  dried-up,   back-broken 

254 


CHILDREN 

workwoman.  It  was  equally  typical  of  French  things 
that  she  should  have  been  "  interviewed,"  and  that  she 
should  have  said  only  "  he  was  my  son."  The  tragic 
mother  of  a  wild  murderer  did  not  fall  below  French 
motherhood.  This  in  more  peaceful  ways  is  a  lifelong 
identification.  To  her  death  the  French  mother  is 
never  free  of  her  child.  She  never  thinks,  "  My  son 
is  settled,  my  daughter  married,  my  duty  by  them  is 
done."  The  "  belle  mere  "  is  a  touching  character. 
The  mother-in-law  who  is  her  daughter's  jolly  elder 
sister,  meets  her  out,  and  asks  her  down  in  a  week-end 
party,  would  be  unnatural  in  France.  Her  son  the 
French  mother  watches  over  in  manhood  exactly  as 
when  she  nursed  him.  She  learns  to  know  for  his 
sake  the  world  which  she  never  knew,  she  makes  his 
career  for  him  even  more  than  his  father  does,  and 
she  would  not  dream  of  being  ashamed  of  choosing 
his  mistress  for  him  if  necessary.  She  is  the  perfect 
mother — from  motherhood's  point  of  view.  Many 
English  mothers  scatter  their  children  about  the 
world  and  may  never  see  them  again.  With  some 
of  them  the  instinct  of  motherhood  is  certainly  not 
passionate.  A  few  recall  the  perfect  motherhood, 
while  it  lasts,  of  animals  who,  when  motherhood  is 
over,  cease  to  know  their  offspring  from  the  rest  of 
their  kind.  But,  from  childhood's  point  of  view,  the 
French  mother  is  not  quite  perfect. 

Her  love  and  her  child's  love  is  perfect,  no  love  is 
as  perfect.     It  is  the  deepest  feeling  of  all  in  French 

255 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

life,  and  it  is  a  noble  element.  It  has  no  self-con- 
sciousness and  is  blank  to  irony.  It  could  be  taken 
as  a  pattern  without  harm:  a  mother's  love  never 
did  any,  and  a  "  mother's  boy  "  does  not  go  wrong 
because  he  is  one.  But  the  most  passionate  love  can 
exist  without  respect,  and  it  is  some  respect  that 
French  parental  love  lacks,  respect  for  the  child's 
small  personality  coming  into  its  own  new  world. 
The  best  French  upbringing  is  wanting  in  a  shade 
of  such  respect,  the  worst  English  upbringing  is  not 
entirely  without  it.  The  worst  brought  up  English 
child  is  a  dragged  up  lout,  the  worst  brought  up 
French  child  is  a  toy.  Father  and  mother  play  with 
it  adoringly,  neither  ever  dreams  that  it  was  born  for 
anything  except  their  own  pleasure,  they  do  not  spoil 
it,  because  a  spoilt  child  is  a  nuisance  even  to  its  own 
parents,  but  they  train  it  to  amuse  them  :  it  learns 
tricks  like  a  poodle,  it  says  pretty  and  sharp  things, 
it  soon  is  a  little  man  or  woman  of  the  world,  dressed 
like  one  and  innocently  speaking  like  one — and  child- 
hood is  blasphemed.  The  most  charming  French 
child  has  suffered  some  taint  from  such  irreverence. 
It  is  exquisitely  grave  and  sweet  and  gay — and  for 
the  Premiere  Communion  it  wTites  out  the  list  of  its 
sins  on  scraps  of  paper,  and  parents  are  amused,  never 
dreaming  that  to  exact  tlie  confession  from  a  child  of 
seven  is  a  sin  against  the  child.  There  is  something 
deeply  terrible  in  being  amused  at  a  child's  innocence. 
I  have  found  hardly  a  French  parent  who  felt  that 

256 


CHILDREN 

strongly,  and  hardly  an  English  one  who  did  not.  The 
most  charming  child  quickly  learns  that  it  amuses  in 
some  way  it  cannot  understand,  and  from  thence  to 
slyness  is  easy.  The  French  child  is  all  charming  life 
and  fun — and  it  finds  itself  applauded  and  plays  to  the 
gallery.  Parents  irreverently  sit  round  and  clap,  and 
the  child  is  made  a  monkey  of.  The  most  atrocious 
English  small  boy,  as  devastating  and  conscienceless 
as  a  fox  terrier  pup,  cannot  by  the  wildest  imagination 
be  supposed  to  be  self-conscious ;  the  most  horrid 
English  little  girl,  sneaky  and  snappish,  will  most 
likely  not  trade  on  her  own  innocence :  both  are 
vilely  brought  up,  yet  in  a  rough  way  their  childhood 
has  been  respected.  The  most  careful  French  parents 
— and  they  are  the  pattern  of  forethought  and  care- 
fulness— may  lapse  from  that  reverence. 

Is  the  French  mind  really  alien  from  the  mind  of 
childhood,  and  is  the  English  mind  in  essential 
sympathy  with  it  ?  There  are  almost  no  French 
real  nursery  rhymes,  there  are  almost  no  French  real 
nursery  tales,  there  is  absolutely  no  French  nonsense 
verse.  I  wonder  that  no  French  philosopher  has 
with  amazement  thought  of  this.  There  is  no  French 
Humpty  Dumpty,  no  pig  that  went  to  market,  no 
house  that  Jack  built,  no  old  AVoman  who  lived  in  a 
shoe,  no  Mother  Hubbard,  no  man  who  had  a  little 
gun,  no  Baby  Bunting,  and  there  is  left  to-day  only 
Cadet  lloussel  and  his  three  hats,  the  Bridge  of 
Avignon,  JNIalbrouk  s'en  va-t-en  guerre,  and  that  is 

257  s 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

almost  all,  and  all  three  have  a  certain  sharp  definite- 
ness,  and  one  of  them,  the  third,  a  dramatic  sense, 
which  are  not  what  childhood  wants.  The  tales  told 
for  French  children  by  French  writers  for  childhood 
Hke  Madame  de  Segur  are  the  negation  of  all  that 
childhood  wants,  and  INIiss  Edgeworth  beside  them 
was  a  genius  in  understanding  the  child.  French 
children  have  to  be  fed  (for  they  have  a  natural 
appetite)  on  Enghsh  stories  with  English  pictures, 
or  on  that  sole  genius  Hans  Andersen,  the  only 
modern  creator  of  folklore.  The  French  philosopher 
does  not  seem  to  have  thought  over  the  extraordinary 
fact  that  nonsense  verse  in  French  is  impossible. 
Like  any  other  real  child  the  French  child  takes  a 
delight  in  talking  nonsense  and  makes  long  and 
absorbing  speeches  in  words  of  his  own  invention ; 
no  French  writer  has  taken  them  down.  In  modern 
times  only  Lewis  Carroll  has,  and  he  remains  the 
greatest  genius  of  childlore.  But  the  Duchess, 
Tweedledum  and  Tweedledee,  the  White  llabbit, 
the  White  Knight,  the  Red  Queen  could  not  be 
French — and  yet  the  French  child,  like  any  real 
child,  understands  them  when  introduced  and  knows 
them  for  real  childworld  persons.  Beside  them  the 
persons  of  French  imitation  folk  stories,  of  La 
P^'ontaine's  adapted  fables  for  instance,  are  horribly 
perfect,  polished  and  reasonable.  The  Dormouse 
and  the  Mad  hatter  are  infinitely  nearer  to  the  child 
of  any  nation  then  the  Cigale  and  the  Fourmi,  the 

258 


CHILDREN 

Renard  and  the  Corbeaii,  or  Perrault's  Pierrette  with 
the  milk  pot.  In  these  is  a  stiff  reason  exquisitely 
expressed,  in  those,  however  cloudily  put,  a  wild 
imagination.  The  French  child  has  the  same  imagi- 
nation as  other  children,  but  his  own  purveyors  do 
not  satisfy  it.  Perhaps  the  French  mind  cannot 
satisfy  its  child  mind.  I  defy  any  one  to  turn  into 
French  the  smile  of  the  Cheshire  Cat.  Yet  I  have 
noticed  yearnings  in  French  children  which  only  the 
Cheshire  Cat's  smile  would  have  really  satisfied.  Is 
the  bane  of  the  French  mind  its  being  too  grown  up  ? 
The  English  people  is  the  only  real  child-people, 
the  French  is  the  most  grown  up.  It  is  always 
amusing  to  hear  the  ingenuous  English  tourist  saying 
that  the  French  chatter  like  children.  The  most 
ingenuous  French  is  not  conversely  impressed  by  our 
maturity.  Beside  the  French  we  shall  always  seem 
immature ;  looking  at  us  or  talking  to  us  they  will 
always  call  us  young,  our  manner  and  our  conversa- 
tion will  never  seem  to  them  finished.  We  have  an 
awkwardness  which  if  they  ever  had  it  they  lost  at 
seventeen,  they  an  assurance  which  we  shall  never 
win.  We  die  still  doubting  what  it  all  means,  and 
they  knew  what  it  meant  when  they  first  began  to 
live.  Our  mind  is  incomparably  less  sure  of  itself 
than  theirs,  and  undoubtedly  less  resolute.  One  of 
its  chief  characteristics  is  its  repugnance  for  thinking 
a  thing  out  to  the  end.  The  first  impulse  of  the 
FrencJ)  inind  carries  it  past  shrinking  on  the  brink. 

259 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

Traversing  again  the  ground  over  which  we  have 
travelled,  one  is  always  amazed  how  often  our  mind 
has  suspended  its  judgment  and  the  French  has 
settled  everything  to  its  own  satisfaction.  The 
almost  invariable  attitudes  are  of  the  one  question 
and  of  the  other  answer.  We  are  still  everywhere 
asking,  the  French  always  have  a  reply  ready.  We 
feel  boys  beside  them  when  they  have  an  answer  pat 
for  all  we  ask.  They  have,  indeed,  thought  out  their 
answers  well.  They  have  on  an  average  sized  up  the 
world  more  thoroughly  than  we  have.  Whichever 
way  we  turn,  we  shall  not  find  that  we  have  seen  one 
aspect  of  life  which  has  escaped  them,  but  in  what- 
ever nook  we  peer  they  have  looked  also,  usually 
before  us  and  usually  with  more  complete  scrutiny. 
Whatever  general  ideas  we  conceive,  the  French 
mind  will  be  familiar  with  them  already.  The 
individual  among  us  will  always  be  found  to  have 
conceived  fewer  general  ideas  than  the  equivalent 
Frenchman.  Any  particular  aspect  of  things  the 
general  English  mind  will  always  be  found  to  have 
observed  less  completely  and  finally.  The  individual 
Englishman  always  betrays  some  incompleteness  of 
thinking  beside  the  finite  thought  of  his  French  peer. 
The  English  mind  always  seems  younger  than  the 
French  mind.  I  liave  often  thought  that  nothing 
shows  better  the  characteristics,  the  virtues,  and  the 
shortcomings  of  tlie  English  and  French  minds  than 
the  behaviour  of  both  towards  childhood.     There  is 

260 


CHILDREN 

always  a  trace  of  condescension  in  the  French  atti- 
tude, some  amazement  in  the  EngHsh ;  the  one 
always  implies  some  consciousness  of  world  know- 
ledge which  the  child  will  have  to  learn,  the  other 
seems  always  to  be  saying,  How  shall  we  teach  the 
child  to  know  a  world  which  we  don't  know  ?  The 
French  mind  thinks  first  of  all.  This  mite  will  become 
a  man  and  must  be  fitted  for  our  world  ;  the  English 
wonders,  What  new  creature  have  we  brought  into 
what  world  ?  Nothing  shows  more  clearly  French 
certainty  and  English  doubt.  The  French  adult 
deliberately  makes  the  world  for  the  French  child, 
an  at  least  plausible  and  workable  world,  the  English 
casts  wild  looks  round  and  shirks  the  double  riddle, 
of  the  world  and  of  the  child.  The  French  father 
creates  a  working  system  of  life  and  puts  his  son  into 
it.  The  English  father  puts  his  son  into  an  English 
public  school.  The  fine  makebelieve  of  the  latter 
will  be  the  boy's  safeguard.  The  admirable  con- 
ventions of  the  English  public  school  will  enable  the 
son  and  the  father  to  avoid  real  problems.  The 
journey  after  that  for  the  boy  will  be  a  journey  who 
knows  whither  ?  But  at  least  the  father  will  feel  that 
he  is  safely  started  and  that  as  he  has  been  supplied 
with  English  traditions  nothing  that  the  wit  of  man 
can  devise  has  been  spared  to  equip  him  for  his 
travels.  In  reality  the  English  boy's  departure,  with 
all  its  elaborate  kit  of  character  drill,  is  much  more  a 
dash  into  the  unknown  than  the  French  boy's.     The 

261 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

safeguards  provided  by  the  English  pubhc  school 
against  the  real  problems  of  life  keep  the  boy  beauti- 
fully fresh.  The  traditions  serve  not  to  show  him 
the  way  but  to  prevent  him  looking.  The  time  may 
never  come  for  him  to  have  to  see  for  himself,  but  if 
it  does  come,  he  is  in  a  new  world,  gazing  with  a 
"  wild  surmise."  The  English  character  sympathises 
deeply  by  instinct  with  the  spontaneity  of  childhood. 
The  ordinary  Englishman  unconsciously  shares  the 
child's  wonder  and  feels  close  to  the  wondering  child. 
I  question  whether  the  Frenchman  ever  does.  The 
English  language  feels  that  it  is  close  to  the  child's 
language,  the  French  certainly  does  not.  The  extra- 
ordinary proof  of  this  is  that  the  child's  tongue  does 
not  disfigure  English  but  disfigures  French.  Child 
English  is  never  un-English  and  generally  delightful ; 
child  French  almost  always  goes  against  the  grain  of 
the  French  language.  Few  of  the  characteristic 
beauties  of  French  remain  in  child  French,  many 
peculiar  beauties  of  English  are  as  clear  to  hear  in 
child  Enghsh  as  in  grown-up  English.  To  be  at  its 
best  the  French  language  must  always  remain  self- 
conscious,  and  that  best  is  the  very  best  of  the  kind. 
Child  English  is  the  best  child  language  and  English 
poets'  dreams  are  the  greatest. 


•2G-2 


MEN" 


XIV 

"  xAIEN  " 

The  English  boy  who  goes  up  to  the  'Varsity 
instantly  becomes  a  "  man " ;  there  are  no  French 
boys  and  "  men  "  :  the  French  public  schoolboy  is  a 
"  young  man,"  the  French  undergraduate  a  "  young 
man."  There  is  something  deliciously  fresh  and  rash 
about  the  name  of  "  men,"  which  the  French  who 
know  of  it  must  wish  they  had.  But  they  haxe  their 
own  name,  if  not  quite  so  young  a  one, — the 
'•jeunes."  That  the"jeunes"  are  old  and  that  the 
"  men "  are  boys  is  easy  at  once  to  say,  but  is  less 
true  than  is  often  supposed.  They  have  much  think- 
ing in  common,  less  living.  There  is  great  kinship, 
as  well  as  great  distance,  between  them.  They  are 
nearer  though  different  in  their  ideas,  and  more 
apart  in  their  outlook  upon  life,  as  far  as  two  pairs  of 
twenty  year  old  eyes  can  look  differently  upon  life. 

The  kinship  of  intelligent  French  and  English 
youth  does  not  come  only  from  their  youth  and 
intelligence.  They  think  together  more  closely  than 
any  young  minds  of  different  nations,  wlio  think 
together  only  because  they  are  young  and  because 

265 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

they  think.  They  have  been  bred  and  drilled  into 
different  ways  of  thought,  but  when  they  attempt 
faintly  to  think  for  themselves,  they  find  in  each 
other  astonishing  comradeship.  A  brand-new  B.A. 
going  in  for  the  Church,  and  a  just  fledged  "  profes- 
sor "  from  the  Ecole  Normale  look  like  the  contraries 
of  one  another  in  manner,  speech,  and  ideas.  A 
graduate  of  last  year  taking  to  writing,  and  a  "  jeune" 
poet  who  has  just  taken  his  Licence  es  Lettres  seem 
incommensurable.  Put  each  two  together  properly, 
and  the  contact  will  be  extraordinarily  close.  The 
young  intelligences  of  France  and  England  have 
more  in  common  than  those  of  any  two  other  coun- 
tries. They  have  a  certain  breadth,  depth  and  per- 
spective which  no  other  two  modern  civilisations  have 
yet  taught.  Both  have  the  past  and  both  have  the 
future,  and  both  believe  in  the  present.  They  look 
with  greater  ease  at  the  world  of  ideas  than  any 
other  young  intelligences  ;  they  have  more  they  can 
leave  to  each  other  unsaid,  they  start  from  a  further 
beginning  and  they  start  together.  They  both  have 
the  greatest  foundations  in  to-day's  world  to  build 
upon,  and  neither  has  lost  the  builder's  spirit.  An 
English  boy  and  a  P^ench  boy  who  think  must  feel 
some  enthusiasm  on  meeting  and  telling  each  other 
tlieir  thoughts,  and  they  do  :  the  two  ripest  but  still 
IVesliest  civilisations  of  the  modern  world  do  come 
togetlier  often  in  these  boys'  meetings,  when"jeune" 
meets  "  man." 

26(> 


"  MEN  " 

Both  nations  should  think  more  about  this.  Most 
thinking  young  Frenchmen  will  tell  you  that  outside 
their  own  people  they  have  nowhere  found  them- 
selves as  much  at  home  intelligently  as  among  Eng- 
lishmen of  their  own  age  and  thoughtfulness.  It  is 
a  superficial  mistake  to  imagine  that  the  thinking 
young  Frenchman  looks  upon  himself  as  a  Latin. 
He  seldom  feels  closely  in  touch  with  his  Italian  or 
Spanish  equal.  He  feels  himself  much  more  of  a 
mixture,  with  some  Northern  dream  dashing  Latin 
Logic — and  making,  he  perhaps  intimately  believes, 
French  reason.  From  the  German,  not  only  facts 
keep  him  always  more  or  less  aloof,  but  also  thoughts, 
although  they  have  often  been  almost  brothers  in 
mind  at  moments,  in  spite  of  the  facts. 

The  modern  facts  between  French  and  English 
have  often  been  bitter,  the  young  French  and  English 
minds  have  never  been  estranged.  AVhen  we  roared 
over  Fashoda  and  the  French,  after  roaring  back, 
gave  in,  the  "jeune"  did  not  the  less  find  his  fellow 
in  the  "  man  "  from  England.  He  has  often  told  me 
that  however  startling  differences  seemed  to  him,  he 
yet  could  argue  best  with  his  English  companion, — 
and  that  is  the  true  test.  He  felt  the  young  English- 
man (when  the  young  Englishman  does  think)  to  be 
his  most  inspiring  answerer :  I  think  we  can  return 
him  the  compliment.  Perhaps  neither  nation  yet 
understands  sufficiently  well  how  much  this  means  ; 
that   young    thinking   France   and   young   thinking 

267 


THE  -FRENCH   AND   THE   ENGLISH 

England  should  feel  that  they  can  hammer  ideas 
better  with  each  other  than  with  anybody  else  is  an 
important  fact  for  the  world. 

Intelligent  young  Italy  has  a  certain  garishness 
which  gets  on  French  nerves — much  more  than  it 
does  on  ours ;  intelligent  young  Germany,  with  all 
its  strange  complication,  still  in  the  long  run  gushes 
as  in  the  old  days ;  intelhgent  young  Russia  is 
violently  decadent,  and  would  be  wholly  out  of  date 
in  Paris  to-day ;  intelligent  young  America  the  French 
"jeune"  cannot  distinguish  from  England;  only  in 
the  Anglo-Saxon  intelligent  youth  the  "jeune"  finds 
really  that  intellectual  ease  and  intellectual  venture- 
someness,  that  boldness  and  that  safety,  which  appeal 
to  him,  the  skill  at  playing  to  wild  limits  with  ideas, 
but  the  nerve  that  keeps  dreams  sane,  the  sincerity  of 
enthusiasm  tempered  by  the  saving  grace  of  irony. 

The  "jeune"  from  France  and  the  "man"  from 
England  are  the  best  fighters  in  the  world.  They 
have  a  great  deal  to  fight  about.  Each  having  agreed 
that  he  would  rather  fight  the  other  than  anybody  else 
in  the  world,  they  then  do  fight. 

Life  most  parts  them,  and  they  would  fight  most 
about  life,  if  youth  were  given  to  much  fighting  about 
life,  but  they  do  fight  about  ideas  also.  Very  much 
in  science,  mucli  less  in  Art,  a  good  deal  in  philosophy, 
they  announce  national  cliaracter.  Our  national  bent 
for  rule  of  thumb  comes  out  very  remarkably  in  our 
youth ;   French  theorism  is  prominent  in  theirs,  but 

268 


«  MEN  " 

that  is  less  surprising.  It  is  natural  for  young  men 
to  prefer  deduction ;  ours  are  perhaps  alone,  because 
they  do  not.  Every  one  who  has  been  able  to  observe 
them  from  the  outside  has  noted  that  in  them.  The 
few  English  minds  that  reasoned  d  p?iori  in  youth 
remember  how  lonely  they  felt.  The  lad  who  laid 
down  a  law  upon  one  observed  fact,  if  he  put  his  one 
fact  cogently,  easily  beat  him  who  knew  he  was  right 
because  he  reasoned  from  right  abstract  premises. 
The  battle  would  go  the  same  way  probably  in  the 
field  of  the  men  of  forty,  but  it  is  unnatural  every- 
where, except  in  England,  to  win  such  victories  at 
two-and-twenty.  I  doubt  that  we  usually  understand 
this  peculiarity  of  our  youth.  The  English  people 
takes  great  pride  in  managing  its  public  affairs  by 
rule  of  thumb,  but  does  not  understand  how  remark- 
ably this  national  characteristic  is  shown  in  its  young 
reasoners.  Realism  in  life  has  no  connection  with 
reasoning  by  induction,  and  the  young  Englishman 
has  no  conception  of  what  the  former  is  ;  but  his  dis- 
like for  abstract  argument  in  debate  is  almost  in- 
variable. In  scientific  thought  the  young  Frenchman 
has  an  almost  invariable  contempt  for  the  concrete. 
This  is  a  national  characteristic  in  him,  and  also  a 
natural  one.  The  young  mind  beginning  to  reason 
naturally  glories  in  abstract  logic,  it  is  the  young 
English  mind  that  is  unnatural,  being  already  a 
pragmatist.  Confront  the  French  "jeune"  and  the 
English  "  man  "  in  science  ;   the  former  will  have  as 

269 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

much  contempt  for  applied  science  as  the  meta- 
physician for  Kantian  Practical  Reason,  the  latter  in 
the  midst  of  Transcendent  INIathematics  will  keep  an 
eye  on  practical  Physics.  The  French  lead  the  world 
in  theoretical  mathematics,  the  French  "jeune"  takes 
some  pride  in  this,  few  young  Englishmen  would. 
The  Frenchmen  who  made  motors  and  drove  them, 
and  make  aeroplanes  and  fly  in  them  are  not  the  same 
"jeunes"  who  sneer  at  applied  science;  but  the  con- 
tempt for  the  concrete  has  not  harmed  the  accomplish- 
ment, theory  has  not  hurt  practice.  It  is  not  all 
gain  for  the  young  Englishman  to  upset  the  law 
of  nature  and  be  no  theorist  even  when  he  begins 
to  think. 

In  art  French  and  English  youth  are  much  less 
national,  and  often  in  fact  anti-national.  The  national 
characters  they  do  announce  are  obvious  to  the  super- 
ficial observer.  Art,  fijiding  a  legitimate  place  more 
easily  in  the  French  scheme  of  the  world  than  in  the 
English,  commands  a  more  natural  and  familiar  respect 
from  French  than  from  English  youth.  The  latter 
throws  out  some  adventurous  and  lively  tentacles  of 
knowledge  and  feeling  into  curious  corners  of  Art. 
But  it  is  a  less  easy  traveller  over  the  whole  field, 
and  at  the  same  time  it  sets  less  store  by  the  journey. 
'JMie  most  dryly  scientific  French  youth  acknowledges 
that  art  exists,  and  that  writing  even  science  is  an  art. 
Even  intelligent  and  thinking  English  youth  some- 
times is  unaware  that  art  has  any  importance  at  all 

270 


"  MEN  " 

in  the  world.  This  difference  any  one  can  see. 
Otlier  differences  to  be  more  closely  observed  are 
not  national,  but  often  reciprocally  anti-national. 
Neither  the  reason  and  realism  of  French  art  are 
markedly  announced  by  French  youth,  nor  the  fancy 
and  feeling  of  Enghsh  art  by  English  youth. 

If  ever  the  intelligent  French  mind  put  fancy 
before  reahsm  in  art,  it  is  at  twenty ;  and  at  twenty 
the  intelligent  English  mind  will  in  art  often  put 
reason  before  feeling.  The  Englishman  learns  to 
know  Shakespeare,  the  Frenchman  to  know  Racine. 

AVhen  both  literary  critics  are  young  (if  both  are 
intelligent  and  well  taught)  the  chances  are  that  the 
first  likes  Racine  better  than  he  will  in  after  years, 
and  that  the  second  worships  Shakespeare  with  an 
enthusiasm  destined  to  cool.  On  questions  of  form 
in  art  it  is  more  likely  the  young  Englishman  will  be 
the  stickler,  and  the  French  "  jeune  "  loftily  lax ;  it 
will  be  the  former  who  will  praise  the  perfect  roundel 
and  ballad  and  sonnet,  and  the  latter  who  will  spurn 
technique  fettering  dreams.  It  is  at  forty  that 
the  Frenchman  who  was  a  real  "jeune"  comes  round 
to  saying  over  Heredia's  "Antony  and  Cleopatra" 
sonnet,  and  at  forty  that  the  Englishman,  who  was  a 
real  "man,"  falls  back  finally  on  words  hke,  "Full 
fathom  five  my  father  lies."  At  twenty  the  English 
mind  wants  Rostand  and  Austin  Dobson,  the  French 
Blake  and  Mallarme. 

The    philosophy   of    the    "jeune"    and    of    the 

271 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

"  man  "  !     Immense  subject — impossible  to  sum  up. 
Let  us  say  that  the  latter  is  practical  and  mystical, 
the    former    theoretical    and    not    mystical.       The 
"  ieune  "  would — or  once  would — be  a  mystic,  but  he 
has  it  not  in  the  blood  ;  the  "  man,"  the  moment  he 
philosophises,  must  be  mysterious.     I  defy  the  two, 
arguing  metaphysics  together,  not  to  be  driven  at 
last,  partly  by  contradictoriness  no  doubt,  the  one  to 
some  sort  of  rationalism,  the  other  to  some  sort  of 
"  credo  quia  absurdum."     The  theorism  and  practical 
sense  of  the  two  agree  of  course  well  with   their 
respective  final  positions.     It  is  as  obvious  that  the 
practical  man  is,  if  he  thinks,  the  mystic  as  that  the 
theorist  is  the  reasoner.    This  difference,  as  far  as  one 
can  tell,  seems  to  be  growing  :  tlie  "  jeune,"  notwith- 
standing— or  because  of — politico-religious  revivals,  is 
making  scantier  attempts  to  be  mystical  than  he  did, 
and  the  "  man  "  looks  like  becoming  more  mystical 
every  day.     The  'Varsity  has  voted  positivism  bad 
form,  so  has  the  Latin  Quarter  ;  but  the  latter  builds 
its  faith  more  than  ever  upon  reason,  and  the  former, 
I    understand,  finds   reason   a   sliiftier  quicksand  to 
build  on  than  ever.     Professor  Bergson  undermines 
reason  because  he  philosophises  in  France  ;  in  Eng- 
land he  might  be  tempted  to  show  up  feeling,  which 
he   would   do   Avith   equal   acutcness.     In   this   way 
French  and  English  youth,  after  all,  come  round  to 
be  national  again.     Apart  from  passing  fashions,  the 
two,   when   reaching   "  to   the  ends  of  being,"  will 

272 


"  MEN  " 

always  clutch  for  their  last  straw — the  one  at  reason, 
the  other  at  feeling. 

Taken  all  round,  French  "jeunes"  cling  more 
intelligently  to  reason  than  English  "  men  "  stick  to 
feeling.  In  contemporary  history,  the  "  jeunes  "  of 
1890,  soon  after  they  began  to  be  called  '"jeunes," 
and  their  heirs  of  11)10,  between  them,  covered  much 
ground.  In  the  twenty  years  French  youth  passed 
from  symbolism  to  neo- classicism,  from  mysticism  to 
political  Roman  Catholicism,  from  rebellious  criti- 
cism and  fervent  blasphemy  to  a  state  of  mind 
(described  by  an  heir  of  1912)  "unwrung  by  any 
throes  of  metaphysical  anxiety,"  and  no  longer 
troubled  "  by  the  problems  of  the  existence  of  God 
and  of  human  fate."  In  the  nineties  it  would  have 
been  unthinkable  that  a  young  Frenchman  should 
not  be  troubled  by  the  problem  of  the  existence  of 
God.  In  the  nineteen  tens  he  was  either  a  disciplined 
Churchman  or,  as  in  polite  society,  in  the  same 
heir's  words,  "  did  not  wish  to  hear  religion  talked 
about."  His  poetry  passed  from  one  that  claimed  its 
right  to  question  all  the  world  to  one  that  claimed 
simply  to  make  up  a  new  French  lyricism  with  what 
was  best  worth  preserving  in  French  symbolism — 
Romanticism  and  Classicism.  His  social  thought 
also  passed  from  great  questioning  to  much  accept- 
ance, and  from  revolt  to  something  almost  like  "Slave 
morality."  The  evolution  of  French  "jeunes"  in  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  since   they  were   first   called 

273  T 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

*'jeunes,"  was  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  mental 
and  collective  change  ever  observ^ed.  To  one  look- 
ing on,  a  good  deal  of  philosophy  seemed  to  have 
been  lost,  while  some  immediate  and  practical  gain 
seemed  to  have  been  won,  for  the  French  youth  that 
no  longer  wanted  ''religion  talked  about"  was  the 
French  youth  that  helped  to  back  the  country  in 
political  crises  of  the  moment.  But  whether  good 
or  bad,  whether  finally  productive  or  barren,  the 
change  was  an  intelligent  one — that  is  to  say,  worked 
by  the  intelligence.  Was  there  any  corresponding 
evolution  among  English  "  men  "  ?  The  worst  thing 
one  could  say  of  them  is  that  there  had  been  none ; 
the  best  thing  one  can  say,  I  am  afraid,  is  that 
they  faintly  traced  a  parallel.  The  English  con- 
temporaries of  the  French  "jeunes"  invented  no 
ideas  that  France  had  not  invented  before  them. 
They  invented  sometimes  admirable  expression,  but 
the  thing  expressed  had  been  formed  for  them  before. 
Decadentism,  symbolism,  like  contemporary  French 
"■naturalism"  (which  never  had  its  "jeunes"),  a 
Romanticism  which  called  itself  realism,  were  all 
echoed  well  in  England ;  but  the  first  note  of  them 
was  never  sounded  there.  Decadentism  in  art,  for 
instance,  found  sometimes  greater  artists  in  England 
than  in  France,  like  Aubrey  Beardsley ;  but  it  was 
always  expressing  ideas  tlie  French  had  thought  of. 
French  naturalism,  again,  though  it  had  no  "  jeunes  " 
in   France,  found  them   in  England,  and  they  were 

274 


**  MEN  " 

good  at  it ;  but  it  remained  F'rench  in  temper  all  the 
same.  A  certain  English  humour,  satire,  and  whim- 
sicalness  remains  always  essentially  English  ;  but  it  is 
not  the  spirit  that  makes  a  school — at  all  events  a 
young  school — certainly  not  one  that  makes  a  school 
for  remaking  the  world.  French  mystic  symbolism  was 
echoed  in  England,  and  was  taken  up  with  natural 
kindness  by  the  natural  mystic  temper  of  the  English 
nation;  but  here,  again,  it  was  the  French  "jeune" 
who  gave  the  impulse  for  the  revival — or  set  the 
fashion.  Had  England,  as  France,  heirs  of  the 
"jeunes,"  "no  longer  troubled  by  the  problem  of 
the  existence  of  God  "  ?  If  so,  the  French  "  jeune  " 
once  more  showed  the  way. 

The  "  man "  and  the  "  jeune "  are  much  more 
different  in  their  behaviour  towards  life  than  in  their 
behaviour  towards  ideas.  In  fact,  they  look  almost 
as  differently  towards  life  as  two  pairs  of  twenty-year- 
old  eyes  can.  The  chief  difference  is  that  the  "  man  " 
does  not  know  he  is  looking  at  life,  and  that  the 
"jeune"  does.  The  former  looks  wildly  and  gaily 
round  him,  wonders  with  his  feelings,  not  his  reason, 
what  it  is  all  about,  tries  to  take  in  as  much  of  it  as 
he  can,  and  does  not  heed  what  it  will  all  take  him 
to :  he  is  the  real  boy,  the  latter  rarely  has  his  boy- 
ishness. The  "man"  is  fresher  than  the  "jeune." 
An  English  boy,  whom  I  knew  exceedingly  well  when 
we  were  twenty,  has  a  book  of  verse  in  his  bookcase 
now  which  the  "jeune"  author  of  the  same  age  gave 

275 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

him  with  the  dedication  :  "  To ,  for  his  freshness." 

The  boy  had  never  once  thought  how  fresh  he  was, 
the  *' jeune  "  had  proved  himself  not  to  have  the  same 
freshness.  Blond,  blue-eyed,  innocent  intelligence 
may  not  understand  that  it  is  a  revelation  to  others. 
The  young  inteUigence  that  does  not  know  itself  is 
the  most  delightful  of  young  intelligences.  The 
"  man  "  looks  with  this  freshness  at  life  and  has  not 
the  least  idea  what  he  is  looking  at.  Lectures,  games, 
boating  Saturdays,  "  man-talks,"  taking  girls  out — 
it  never  occurs  to  him  to  have  the  slightest  idea  what 
it  will  all  lead  to.  If  one  asked  him  about  his  life 
(which  is  absurd)  he  would  say  that  he  was  supposed 
to  be  going  into  the  Church,  or  the  Civil  Service,  or 
the  Foreign  Office,  or  to  be  coming  into  something. 
The  rest  of  his  life  he  would  not  dream  of  thinking 
about,  and  he  would  look  blank  at  being  told  that  the 
girl  he  takes  out  might  be  as  much  a  matter  of  life  as 
the  career  he  embraces.  The  "jeune"  does  know  he 
is  looking  at  life. 

Sometimes  he  seems  to  us  to  be  looking  at  it  only 
too  knowingly.  The  fable  of  Bohemian  carelessness 
in  the  Latin  Quarter  never,  I  believe,  was  true. 
Oxford  is  much  more  the  place  that  thinks  not  of 
the  morrow.  The  "jeune"  who  has  never  tried  to 
map  out  his  life  is  rare,  and  not  only  his  career,  but 
all  his  life.  A  house-surgeon  of  twenty-seven,  six 
months  before  taking  his  doctor's  degree,  asked  a 
marriage-making  old  maid  to  find  him  a  tall,  slim, 

270 


"  MEN  " 

dark,  clear-complexioned  bride  with  £G000,  ascertain- 
ing first  of  all  in  which  French  country  town  she 
would  prefer  to  settle.  Intending  to  practise  in  a 
provincial  town,  he  wished  before  buying  a  practice 
and  taking  a  wife,  to  be  assured  that  the  place  of  the 
former,  which  he  had  not  yet  chosen,  would  not  be 
distasteful  to  the  latter,  whom  he  had  not  yet  chosen 
either.  Ought  we  to  see  only  the  comic  side  of  such 
extreme  forethought  ?  I  never  heard  whether  the 
doctor  found  a  bride.  If  so,  it  is  just  as  likely  they 
lived  happily  ever  afterwards.  His  example  was  a 
counsel  of  perfection,  which  most  of  his  fellows  fall 
short  of,  but  they  very  seldom  butt  haphazard  into 
life  after  the  English  way.  They  lay  some  plans  not 
only  for  to-morrow,  but  for  to-day.  To-morrow — at 
thirty — they  will  marry,  and  they  may  already  know 
who  the  girl  will  be  or  at  least  where  to  look  for  her. 
For  to-day  they  plan  so  much  work,  so  much  fun — 
and  so  much  sex.  They  don't  deny  themselves  the 
work,  they  don't  shirk  the  fun  ;  they  portion  out  the 
love  also.  They  know  what  they  must  do  to  get  on, 
and  they  know  how  much  they  can  play ;  they  know 
what  woman  must  mean  to  them.  They  have  no 
illusions  for  to-day  (even  if  they  have  any  for  to- 
morrow) and  they  are  merely  sure  that  sex  is,  like  fun 
or  work,  a  thing  there  is  no  shirking.  They  just 
choose  mistresses  on  lease,  and  the  mistresses  know 
pretty  well  within  a  year  or  two  how  long  the  lease 
will  be.     It  is  all  plain,  clear  and  reasonable — and  we 

277 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

call  it  brutal :  we  half  pretend  to  believe,  and  half  do 
believe  it  brutal.  The  "  jeune  "  considers  it  the  only 
clean  and  intelligent  adjustment  of  nature  and  civilisa- 
tion. 

Sex  is  what  the  "jeune"  and  the  "  man"  in  life 
most  split  on.  I  think  we  have  to  acknowledge  that 
this  difference  takes  the  former  further  than  the 
latter  away  from  the  normal  mean.  The  '' jeune's  " 
behaviour  towards  sex  will  be  more  generally  accepted 
the  world  over  as  natural  than  the  "man's."  The 
young  EngUshman  is  an  interesting  alloy  of  chastity 
and  lewdness,  tenderness  and  roughness,  shyness  and 
brutality,  callowness  and  cynicism,  heedless  bounty 
and  sharp  callousness.  The  young  Frenchman  offers 
no  such  wide  extremes.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine 
him  as  generous,  as  innocent,  as  backward,  as  deUcate, 
as  pure  with  women,  as  the  young  Englishman.  He 
would  never  put  up  with  a  quarter  as  much  as,  with- 
out thinking,  the  latter  does.  A  type  of  English- 
woman which  has  a  delicious  name  in  Enghsh  slang 
has  no  name  in  French,  solely  because  it  does  not 
exist  in  France.  The  "jeune"  is  not  nearly  kind  or 
simple  or  timid  enough  to  let  himself  be  teased.  The 
cleverest  girl  had  better  not  try  aught  on  with  him. 
He  met  his  first  mistress  while  the  English  boy  was 
still  almost  a  child,  "  and  he  learnt  to  know  women 
from  her" — once  for  all,  apparently.  The  English- 
man often  never  learns  at  all,  the  English  boy  certainly 
never  knows.     The  English  girl,  either  the  pure  or 

278 


"  MEN  " 

the  other,  always  knows  more  than  he,  each  in  her 
own  way.  He  is  led  easily  by  either  to  different 
ends.  For  any  one  interested  in  human  nature  the 
British  barmaid  is  one  of  the  most  absorbing  and 
startling  studies  possible.  She  rouses  the  utmost 
astonishment  and  commands  the  utmost  admiration. 
Compared  with  her  the  British  young  man  is  feeble. 
Many  ethnologists,  I  suppose,  must  have  asked  them- 
selves why  there  are  no  barmaids  in  France  :  the 
reason  of  course  is  that  the  French  young  man  is  not 
ingenuous  enough.  Many  other  ethnologists  or  the 
same  must  have  noted  that  it  is  impossible  to  translate 
"  walking-out "  into  French  ;  the  French  young  man 
does  not  walk — or  drive — out,  the  French  girl  does 
not  ask  him  to  :  that  is  the  sum  of  it. 

The  "  man  "  does  not  look  sexual  instinct  in  the 
face.  He  is  afraid  to  think  soberly  of  its  plain  facts. 
He  has  invented  a  dozen  different  ways  of  not  looking 
straight  at  it.  He  is  a  master  of  all  its  make-believes 
and  skirmishes  ;  he  discovered  "  spooning,"  and  can 
give  points  to  any  at  that.  He  secretly  understands, 
but  is  ashamed  ;  he  therefore  half  believes  that  the 
means  are  right  but  the  natural  end  wrong.  It 
remained  for  a  French  novelist  to  dot  the  i's  for  him, 
and  to  coin  out  of  the  "  man's  "  feminine  experience 
the  brutally  precise  name  of  dcmi-vierge.  She  finds 
the  English  boy  more  honestly  shy  and  more  honestly 
chaste  than  she  is ;  she  does  not  find  the  French  so. 
He  may  be  a  monk  by  temperament ;  if  not,  he  is 

279 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

always  something  of  a  realist  in  his  affections :  he 
never  shrinks  from  knowing  what  his  senses  mean  to 
him.     On  a  higher  plane,  when  true  sentiment  enters 
into  the  game  and  it  becomes  a  high  and  splendid 
pastime,  the  two  boys  are  still  kept  in  the  same  way 
apart.     The  one  trembles  at  his  boldness,  the  other 
never  doubts  that  the  end  he  wants  is  right ;  the  one 
half  fears,  the  other  welcomes  realities  ;  the  one  puts 
woman  on  a  pedestal  and  is  almost  disappointed  to 
find  she  is  flesh,  the  other's  best  hope  is  to  make  that 
discovery  and  he  worships  her  in  his  arms.    Every  one 
of  course   says  that  in  the  French  the  senses  are 
stronger,  but  this  is  firstly  a  shallow,  and  secondly  a 
false  explanation.     The  young  Frenchman  is  not  the 
slave  of  his  senses,  the  young  Englishman  is  exactly 
as  sensual  as   he.     The  former  can  be  tender,  shy, 
chaste,  the  latter  is  no  faint  heart ;  but  the  one,  what- 
ever coward  love  may  make  of  him,  still  looks  reality 
in  the   face,  the   other,  be  he  ever  so   bold,  never 
bluntly  tells  himself  the  facts.     There  is  a  perhaps 
morbid  delicacy  which  remains  English.     Some  bloom 
of  the  utmost  fineness  is  perliaps  always  wanting  in 
French   loves,   however   tender   and   fine.     But   the 
French  loves  nearer  the  eartli  may  be  more  whole- 
some. 

But  the  "  man  "  is  a  strange  alloy,  the  other  metal 
in  him  is  remarkably  different.  Few  can  have  failed 
to  note  what  a  brute  tlie  innocent  boy  can  become. 
The  realistic  "  jeune ''  drunk  at  the  d'Harcourt   on 

•280 


"  MEN  " 

New  Year's  Eve  is  then  polished  by  his  side.     He 
is  sometimes  to  be  seen  stamping  through  that  very 
d'Harcourt  Hke  a  savage,  and  the  "  jeune  "  and  the 
"jeune's"  girls   are  shocked.     He  does  not   under- 
stand that  in  France  even  among  drunken  students 
and  prostitutes  it  is  possible  to  go  too  far,  and  the 
thought  suddenly  overwhelms  his  sober  countryman 
looking  on  that  among  these  he  really  must  seem  to 
be  a  savage  from  the  North  let  loose  in  an  anciently 
polished  world.     We  pooh-pooh  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances such  French  ideas,  and  set  them  down 
to  French  insularity  ;  but  the  English  young   man 
gaily  trying  to  do  in  Paris  as  he  thinks  Paris  does 
forces  us  to  see  some  truth   in  them.     Perhaps  it 
may  also   have  been   observed    by   some    moralists 
that    there    is    no    youth    that    behaves    worse    to 
its   "unfortunates"   than    the    EngHsh  (except   the 
German),   and   that   the   young   Frenchman   at   his 
wildest    preserves    some    shade   of   respect   for    all 
women,  whereas  the  young  Englishman   sometimes 
loses    all.     'J'he    public   woman    in    London    is    to 
be  seen  any  night  in  bars  suffering  with   resigned 
apathy  indignities  which  the  lowest   Frenchwoman 
would   stab   a   man   with    her    hatpin    rather    than 
put  up  with.     The  unfortunate  Englishwoman  takes 
it  to  be  all  in  her  night's  work.     The  same  young, 
shy,   tender,   chaste    Englishman,    wrought    to    the 
pitch,  joins  in  the  baiting,  as  being  part  of  his  night 
out.     The    same    cynical   young    Frenchman,   who 

281 


THE  FRENCH  AND  THE  ENGLISH 

deliberately  hires  a  mistress  on  lease,  will  yet  make 
a  common  strumpet  in  a  bar  feel  that  she  is  a  woman, 
"of  the  sex  to  which  he  owes  his  mother,"  in  the 
exquisitely  absurd  old  phrase  of  French  melodrama. 

Some  of  us  have  noted  this  good  trait  in  the 
French  people,  that  it  treats  its  prostitutes  decently, 
and  this  bad  one  in  the  Enghsh,  that  it  is  capable  of 
brutality  towards  its  prostitutes.  The  "  man  "  wakes 
up  remorseful,  and  takes  up  chaste,  tender,  unreal 
flirtations  again  with  a  chastened  spirit.  The  "  jeune  " 
does  not  wake  up  sorry,  because  a  little  of  la  noce 
is  in  his  curriculum,  and  takes  up  no  thread  of 
platonic  entanglements,  because  he  knows  he  is  to 
meet  his  mistress  Tuesday  next  at  11.45  for  lunch 
and  the  day. 

On  the  whole  the  ''jeune"  is  a  reasonable 
creature  in  his  Hving  and  in  his  thinking,  the  "  man  " 
a  creature  of  fancy.  The  former  is  never  quite  free 
from  the  mad  ambition  to  balance  his  universe,  the 
latter  is  in  his  heart  persuaded  that  there  is  no 
balance.  What  one  likes  the  *\jeune  "  for  is  that  he 
thinks  he  knows  whither  he  is  going — what  one  likes 
in  the  "  man  "  is  that  he  knows  he  does  not  know 
where  he  is  going  to. 


282 


INDEX 


American,  the,  5 

Amphitryon,  20G 

Anarchist  parsons,  171,  173,  175 

Anti-Corn-Law  League,  154 

Anti- Vivisection,  154 

Ariel,  220 

Art,  Bourgeoisie  and,  139 

French   and   English   youth   in, 
270 
Artistic  Parisian  outlook,  64 

B 

Bailey,  Altiora,  170,  175 
Baudelaire,  229 
"Beaux  Vers,"  201 
Bel  Ami,  English,  245 

,,      „      6'> 

Blake,  William  (French  incompre- 
hension of),  49 

Bloc,  8G 

Boileau,  205 

Bosnia  -  Herzegovina     Annexation 
Crisis,  92 

Boulangisra,  84,  86 

Boulevards,  dead,  58 

Bourgeoisie  and  art,  139 
and  life,  144,  155 
,,    music,  141 
,,    sex,  146 
,,    writing,  142 

Business  class,  French,  23 

Byron,  222,  225 


C.  G.  T,  (General  Labour  Federa- 
tion), 87 

Camille,  curses  of,  198 

Chavannes,  Puvis  de,  25 

Cheshire  cat  and  French  children, 
259 


Child  language,  262 

people,  259 
Child's  imagination,  253 
Children,  English,  251 

French,  256 

real,  251 
Chinese  of  Europe,  the,  26 
"Cliches,"  237 
Coleridge,  197 
Conservatism,    political  and  social 

(French),  83 
Corneille,  198,  202,  204 
Cranks  cfd.,  176 

D 

Damning  Englishman,  the,  11 
Demi-Vierge,  279 
Dickens  impressionism,  245 
Discipline  in  individualism,  81 

rebellion  and,  193 
Disestablishment,  French,  87 
Dissociation,  English  faculty  of,  68 
Divine  average  and  dreams,  144 
Don  Juan,  206 
Dreyfus  case,  86 

E 

Ecriture  artiste,  235 
Edward  VII. and  Press,  124 
Edward  VII.'s  move,  93 
Election  of  1906,  General,  75,  77, 

123,  161 
Embankment,  39 
Encyclopedistes,  191 
Entente  cordiale,  90,  163 
Eyes  and  no  eyes,  37 

F 

Faith  in  life,  French,  85,  88,  151 
Fancy,  reason  and,  193 


283 


INDEX 


Fashoda  fuss,  92,  267 

Father,  French  and  English,  cfd., 

261 
Flaubert,  247 
Foreign  aflairs,  English  and  French, 

90 
France,  Anatole,  61,  66,  246 
Franco-Russian  Alliance,  90 
Freedom,  English  and  French  cfd., 

80 


Germany  (National  misunderstand- 
ings), 4 
Girardin,  Emile  de,  126 
Gladstone,  73 

Govermnent  clerk  caste,  98 
Grown-up  people,  259 


H 

Hero-worship,  political,  83 
Homelikeness  (of  cities),  37 
Homogeneity,  French,  22 
Hugo,' Victor,  202 

,,  ,,     and  Verlaine,  208 

Hunt,  Holmanj  49 
Hypocrisy  (English),  180 

I 

Ibsen  (contrary  to  French  spirit), 

25 
Imagination,  English,  174 

see  Child's  imagination. 

see.  Political  imagination. 

see  Mystery,  sense  of. 
Imperialism  (and  Public  Imagina- 
tion), 74 
"  Impression  fausse,'*  209,  211 
Impressionism,  Dickens,  245 

English,  247 

Meredith,  245 

Prose  (English  and  French),  245 
Individualism,  discipline  in,  81 
Insularity,  French,  26 

Parisian,  63 
Intelligence,  French  (and  poetry), 
189 

see  also  Mind,  French. 
Italy  (National  misunderstandings), 

6 


James,  Henry,  5,  246 
"  Je  pense  done  je  suis,"  188 
'*  Jeunes  "  and  "  men,"  cfd.,  265 
evolution  of,  273 

K 

Keats,  211 
King  Lear,  213 
Kubla  Khan,  198 


Ladies  who  will  not  live  a  lie,  171, 

173, 175 
Language,  speaking  of  the  French, 
21,55 

•see  Child  language. 

see  Oratory. 
L^gende  des  Siecles,  208 
Life,  "Man,"  "  Jeune,"  and,  275 

Bourgeoisie  and,  146 

Parisian  view  of,  61,  62,  63,  64 
Literary  mania,  60 

Mania  and  antidote,  67 

Workshops  of  Paris,  60,  66 
Loudon,  excitement  of,  42,  43 

false,  36 

half-Haussmannised,  39 

incomprehension  of,  44 

man,  woman  and,  47 

Parisian  discovering,  37 

real,  36 

Society,  40,  41 

thinking,  44,  46 
Londonism,  58 


M 


Macbeth,  203,  217 

and  "  The  Tempest,"  219 
Mad  Englishman,  165 
Madame  Marguerite  de  la    Tour, 

176 
Mallarme,  199,  215 
Matisse,  Henri,  141 
Maupassant,  66,  246 
"  Men,"  see  "  Jeunes  "  and  "  Men." 
Meredith,  212 

impressionism,  245 
Micawber,  French  Mrs.,  244 
Middle-classes,  solid  English,  152 


284 


INDEX 


Miud,  English,  7,  27,  56 
French,  25,  26,  28,  56,  68 

Misanthrope,  Le,  206 

Missolonghi,  162 

Moliere,  187,  206,  221,  223 

Mother,  French,  254 

Mrs.  Winifred  Slaughter,  178 

Music,  Bourgeoisie  and,  141 

Mystery,  English  sense  of,  188 
see  Imagination,  English. 
see  Poetry  and  mystery. 


N 

Napoleon,  4,  192 

Napoleonic  spirit,  75 

Nation   that  knows  itself  least,  6, 

16 
National  consciousness,  3 

misunderstandings  (England),  6, 
10,  11,  30 

misunderstandings  (France),  6,  7, 
30,  31 

self-knowledge,  9 
"New  Machiavelli,"  170 
Nonsense  verse,  no  French,  257 
Nursery  rhymes,  Plnglish,  251 

rhymes,  no  French,  257 


O 


Oratory,  businesslike,  106,  107 
humorous  modem,  106 
statesmanlike,  105,  110 
see  also  Political  humour. 


Paris,  incomprehension  of,  48 

intelligent,  54 

London  discovering,  53 

,,  ,,  husk  of,  53 

solid,  53 

(states  of  mind),  35 
Parisian  in  the  street,  65 
Parisianism,  58,  66 
Pharos  Club,  154 
Philosophy      of      "jeimes"     and 

"men,"  271 
Poetry  and  mystery,  220 

and  reason,  216 


Poetry,  human,  213 

see  Intelligence,  French. 
Poets,  greatest  Englishmen  great, 
191 
nation  of,  183 
young  pagan,  171, 173,  175 
Political   eloquence,    French,   105, 
108 
caste,  English.     See  Politicians, 
humour,  English,  105 
imagination,  English,  73 
„  French,  29 

language,  English,  238 
parties,  French,  103 
state  relations  (of   England  and 

France),  88 
temperament       (English       and 

French  cfd.),  78,  79,  84 
types,  103 

world,  saneness  of  English,  102 
, ,      vitality  of  French,  102 
Politicians,   professional    English, 
97,  101 
amateur  French,  97,  101 
see  Press  and  Politicians 
Politics,  English  and  Frencli  games 

of,  cfd.,  31,  100,  101 
Ponchon,  Raoul,  125 
Pout  des  Arts,  39 
Pope,  201 

Press  and  Edward  VII.,  124 
and  Politicians,  128 

,,    Stage,  126 
corrupt  French,  115 
honest  English,  115 
intelligent  French,  120 
London  Press  and  London,  122 
Paris  Press  and  Paris,  122 
stupid  English,  120 
Prosateurs,  nation  of,  183 
Prose,  analytic  English,  247 
bad  French,  235 
,,    English,  236 
good  English,  242 

,,     French,  241,  244 
impressionism,       English       and 

French,  245 
synthetic  French,  247 
Prose-thinkers,    greatest    French- 
men great,  191 
Public  man,  English,  98 
school,  English,  261 
wants,  what  the,  132 
Pulse,  feeling  the  public,  126 


285 


INDEX 


R 

Racine,  202,  226 

Reality,  French  sense  of,  174 

Reason  and  Fancy,  193 

see  Poetry  and  reason. 
Reasoners,     young    English     and 

French,  269 
Rebellion  and  discipline,  193 
Rebels  in  action  (French),  191 

in  thought  (English),  191 
Representative     men      and    ideas 

(national  misunderstandings),  4 
Republic,  Third,  86,  89 
Revolution,  French,  191 
Ronceveaux  Pass,  103 
Rule-of -Thumb,  84,  268,  209 
Russia    (national     misunderstand- 
ings), 5 


St.  Leger,  163 

Seine,  39 

Self-consciousness,  English,  14 

Sentimentality,  English,  183,  186 

(other  kinds),  185 

soul  of  good  in,  184 
Sex,  "  man,"  "  jeune  "  and,  277 

see  Bourgeoisie  and  sex. 
Slielley,  223 
Slang,  truth  of,  159 
Socialist   eloquence.     See   Political 

eloquence. 
Socialist-Radical's  wife,  171 
South  Africa,  Union  of,  75 
Splendid  isolation  (Eng.),  27 
Spooning,  185,  279 
Stage.     See  Press  and  stages. 
Sub-editors,  idealist,  173,  175 
SuflFragettes,  48,  154 


Svrabols  (human  and  not  human), 

'218 
Syndicalism,  47 


Thames,  39 

Tlieorism,   political   (French),   84, 

100 
Thinking,  capacity  for  not,  153 

U 

Unconsciousness,  English,  8 
Un-French,  25 
Unified  Socialist's  wife,  171 
Uninsular  Englishman,  the,  12,  13, 
55 

T 

Vacuous  young  Englishman,  166 
Verlaine,  199,  204,  209,  211,  229 

see  Victor  Hugo. 
Vicar  in  Normandy,  Shropshire,  164 
Villemessant,  126 

W 

Wagner  (contrary  to  French  spirit), 
25 

Whitman,  AValt  (national  misunder- 
standings), 5 

Words,  real,  159 
and  ideas,  230 

AVriting.     <S'ee  Bourgeoisie  and  writ- 
ing. 
see  also  Prose 

y 

Young  Euglishineu  and  Frenchmen, 
207 


THE   END 


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